New Developments in Hadareni Pogrom Case
13 November 2006
On 27 April 2006, the first instance court in Ludus, Romania announced its ruling in relation to a request, made by a number of ethnic Romanians from Hadareni, to stop the enforcement of a decision given by the Targu Mures Court of Appeals in February 2004. By that decision, the Court of Appeals granted the victims of the Hadareni pogrom material and moral damages worth 188,000 RON (approximately 53,730 EUR). The ethnic Romanian sentenced in the Hadareni trial asked the court in Ludus to rule that payment of those damages must be foreclosed by effect of the European Court of Human Rights judgments in the matter of Moldovan and Others v. Romania concerning the 1993 pogrom in Hadareni.
During the 1993 pogrom in the village of Hadareni, three Romani men were killed and 18 Romani houses were destroyed. Ruling in relation to the pogrom and its consequences, the Strasbourg Court held that the Romanian Government was in breach of a number of articles of the Eu ropean Convention and ordered it to pay the victims damages totalling 500,000 Euro.
The Ludus court ruled in favour of the applicants, holding that the compensation awarded by virtue of the Strasburg Court judgments included the damages awarded by domestic courts. The Romani victims of the 1993 pogrom declared they would appeal against the decision of the Ludus court.
In another long – awaited development, on 20 April 2006, the Romanian Government adopted the Government Decision for the Approval of the Hadareni Community Development Plan 2006- 2008. The Government is finally acting upon the commitments it had taken by entering a friendly settlement with some of the victims of the 1993 pogrom. According to that settlement, which was the subject of one of the two Moldovan judgments, the Government undertook, besides paying damages to the applicants, to institute a series of ameliorative measures, aimed in particular at fighting discrimination against Roma in the Hadareni area, as well as initiating community development projects aimed at inproving the living conditions of the local Roma community. The projects included in the Plan will benefit all ethnic communities in the Hadareni area (Roma, Hungarians and Romanians), and cover five main areas: public information, civic education, the prevention and combating of discrimination; education, culture, inter-confessional dialogue; economic development; health and access to health services; housing and infrastructure. The Government allocated some 3.48 million RON (approximately 994,450 EUR) for funding these projects for the period 2006 to 2008, of which 1.5 million RON (approximately 428,625 EUR) to be spent this year.
(ERRC)
