Racist authorities abuse Romanian Roma in Romania
10 April 2001
According to reports from the Bucharest-based non-governmental organisation Romani CRISS, on February 1, 2001, masked police officers, armed and with dogs, raided an early morning train from Tohanul Vechi to Braşov city. The officers rounded up Roma travelling on the 7:30 AM train, including women and young children, and used force to make them exit the train at Râşnov, one stop prior to their destination, which was Braşov itself. The police used dogs to intimidate the Roma and push them into waiting police cars. They reportedly beat those who refused to get into the cars. The Roma were taken to Zărneşti police station where all were fingerprinted, including the children. Some of those detained were fined for minor contraventions of the law. The same officers also raided the 9:45 AM train from Tohanul Vechi railway station to Braşov, preventing Roma waiting at the station from boarding the train and, in some instances, using police dogs to force them into waiting police vans. The Roma were fingerprinted, and received warnings not to continue their journey to Braşov as the police threatened to punish them if they did so, reportedly stating that they would burn down their homes. A child as young as 18 months was also fingerprinted.
On February 9, the Railway Transportation Police raided the same 7:30 early morning train to Braşov. Roma on the train were gathered into one compartment and held their until the train reached its final destination, Braşov, notwithstanding that a number of the Romani travellers wished to depart the train at the stops prior to the city. In the compartment, officers warned them to stop travelling to Braşov, “otherwise you will be killed and your houses will be burned.” Upon arrival in Braşov, the Roma were taken to the Braşov Railway Transportation police station, fingerprinted, forced to make statements, and again threatened with remarks such as, “we’ll set you on fire, you crows” and “you will have a worse time than during the Antonescu regime.” The pro-Nazi and viciously anti-Semitic and anti-Romani government of Ion Antonescu, 1940-1944, engaged in genocidal persecution of Roma. In both raids, according to witnesses, only Roma were targeted. According to a written statement by the Railway Transportation Police of Braşov to Romani CRISS, approximately 100 persons were detained in total on February 1 and February 9. According to the same statement, the raids were legal since “the facts of begging and disturbing the major intersections in the city had been established.” Romani CRISS has filed criminal complaints in connection with the two raids. As of April 25, 2001, there has been no response to the Romani Criss complaint.
In further raids in the Braşov area, on January 28, 2001, police officers raided Zizin, a settlement near the town of Braşov. According to the testimony of victims, seven or eight officers, some in uniform and some masked, arrived at just after six in the morning. The officers were searching for a group of Romani young men who had been involved in collecting scrap iron the previous evening. They forced down the doors of the houses where they suspected the men to be and used considerable violence against the young men and their families. One witness described how the officers beat people with the butts of their guns. One officer fired cartridges which emitted a fine powder inside a house, hitting a fifty-four year old man three times. An aerosol was also used inside houses, causing extreme irritation to eyes and lungs, and a numbness in the extremities to those affected. The police arrested six or seven young men whose current whereabouts or health is to date unknown. A non-Romani neighbour in Zizin told the ERRC that Roma were specifically targeted in the raid and that he heard police officers shouting racist remarks. The situation of Roma in Romania is the subject of the ERRC country report Sudden Rage at Dawn: Violence against Roma in Romania, available on the internet at www.errc.org, as well as of a forthcoming report by the ERRC.
(ERRC, Romani CRISS)
