Excuses and accusations on the Romanian political scene

The Romanian Interior Minister Carmen Dan has again made clarifications on the violent actions that occurred on August 10

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Ştefan Stoica, 20.08.2018, 12:23

Fiercely contested for the way in which the Gendarmerie acted during the Diasporas anti-government protest of August 10, the Interior Minister Carmen Dan presented some aspects of a report on the events of August 10, which is a classified document for the moment. As compared to other protests, the behavior of the mass of protesters was different on this occasion, says Carmen Dan, according to whom the peaceful protesters were reticent to take a step back from the aggressive intruders, therefore the gendarmes mission to isolate and extract the violent persons from the group of protesters was made difficult if not impossible to fulfill.

Football fans supposedly had an important role in the violent actions. According to minister Carmen Dan, they infiltrated the crowd in different spots, which prevented the gendarmes from blocking their access to the protest area. The authorities report shows that the first violent actions were reported in the afternoon, when the violent persons forced their advance towards the government courtyard through the line of gendarmes. Incidents and provocations continued until 10 p.m. when the gendarmes issued a last warning, minister Dan added, and order was re-established after midnight. 450 people needed medical assistance on the spot, during the protests, of whom 33 gendarmes.

Minister Carmen Dan: “I start by presenting my apologies to all those who had to suffer following last weeks violence, be they civilians or military gendarmes. We started an internal investigation into the actions of the gendarmes involved in the August 10 mission and, so far, we identified 5 cases of alleged abuse against peaceful people.”

The interior minister also denounced what she called “fake news and lies” that circulated in the online environment and the mass-media and said that people should separate truth from lies in the case of the August 10 violent repression. The president of the opposition Save Romania Union party, Dan Barna, has again called for Carmen Dans resignation, whom he accuses of trying to cover up the responsibility of the gendarmes who used tear gas against and brutalized the peaceful demonstrators. In a Facebook post, he says that it is unacceptable to put the blame for what happened on the peaceful protesters and to actually accuse the very victims of the repression.

The first vice-president of the Liberal Party Raluca Turcan believes that the Gendarmerie was discredited and the interior minister Carmen Dan and the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Liviu Dragnea, the strongman of the Social Democratic Party, should take all the blame for this situation. As many as 300 people made criminal complaints against the gendarmes. There are many video recordings showing peaceful people being hit by gendarmes. These images clearly prove that the riot police acted abusively, the President Klaus Iohannis and the opposition parties accused in one voice. In reply, the Social Democrats denounce an alleged attempt to overthrow the government by force. (translated by Lacramioara Simion)