Mittwoch, 25. Oktober 2017

The Obsessive Decade - A Revised Version

By Daniel Dragomirescu, Bucharest

Philosopher Gabriel Liiceanu recently commented, on a TV channel, on the pardon law, promulgated by the Parliament: „… There was some talk, in an interview, about dignity…their dignity is hurt, it went too far, dignity is not respected in prison” and then asked himself rhetorically: „Is it respected in hospitals, in schools, where children sit in freezing cold classrooms, in the Romanian trains or on the highways?”

This question asked by the well-know philosopher is justified. In the 50s, in the prisons of the communist regime, people like Mircea Vulcănescu, Petre Țuțea and Alexandru Paleologu were kept in conditions which resembled those of the extermination camps. Many of them did not come out alive from behind bars. No public voice, no organization, no institution dared to speak out back then in Romania (RPR/RSR)* in order to demand that they be freed on account on the inhuman conditions they were being kept in. The deputies from MAN** and the governing class did not move a finger for those imprisoned in a discretionary manner, which disregarded elementary human rights. It was an upside-down world. The West only sometimes protested, not very audibly, while Western public opinion was made to believe that in the Eastern communist camp a better and more just world was being created.

And now this upside-down world is coming back after decades, in an equally flagrant and illegitimate manner. Now deputies and governing people give pardon laws and free the vicious, bandits, criminals, and no doubt, the huge names of corruption, who are responsible for the misery of today’s Romania. If it was possible for the Romanian elite to be kept in communist prisons in inhuman conditions, the elite of petty thieves, criminals and mafia is given their freedom back, in the name of human rights. A man like Mircea Vulcănescu, after writing his work for the country, had to die in prison, while a man like Dan Voiculescu, after looting the country, had to be released 7 years earlier so that he could freely indulge in luxury for the rest of his life. The current political regime, the result of a combination that wants to be socialist-liberal, is in reality just a new version of the obsessive decade.

*
RPR and later RSR is as DDR, a name of the country during the communist regime.
RPR - Popular Republic of Romania
RSR - Socialist Republic of Romania

**
MAN is a name of the communist parliament
MAN = The Great National Assembly


Translation Romanian/English: Roxana Doncu 


 

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