Background

On 19 May, some 40,000 people attended what was reportedly the largest demonstration since the fall of Nicolae Ceauşescu in 1989. Public sector employees, including teachers and health care workers, as well as pensioners and mothers, protested against the austerity programme agreed to by the government, the International Monetary Fund and the EU to address the economic crisis. The programme stipulated a 25 per cent cut in salaries in the public sector, a 15 per cent cut in pensions, reduction of family benefits and cuts in welfare programmes. In July, the government reduced the capacity of or dissolved several agencies entrusted with promotion of equal opportunities and protection from discrimination. In August, the CERD Committee warned that the austerity measures might have a negative impact on the situation of the most vulnerable groups, and called for the adoption of measures that would ensure protection of such groups from the effects of the crisis.

An unauthorized protest by police officers over wage cuts led to the resignation of the Minister of Interior in September. In October, the government won a vote of no confidence for the second time in four months.

Discrimination – Roma

In spite of protests by NGOs, Roma continued to be victims of negative ethnic stereotyping, including at the highest levels of political discourse. The Minister of Foreign Affairs spoke about “links between criminality and the Romani community” and referred to a “natural” rate of delinquency among Roma. In November, during his visit to Slovenia, the President also referred to Roma as “delinquents” and spoke of them as “difficult to integrate” and “unwilling to work”. In December the government submitted a legislative proposal to parliament to change the official name of Roma as a minority to “Ţigan”. NGOs protested, given that the name “Ţigan” has pejorative connotations and stigmatizes the community.

In terms of wider society, an opinion poll on the public perception of Roma carried out by the Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy in October showed that 67 per cent of Romanians would not accept a member of the Romani community in their family.

In August, the CERD Committee raised concerns that Roma continued to be victims of racial stereotyping and discrimination in access to quality education, housing, health care services and employment. Romania was criticized for a failure to adopt legislation required to turn previous commitments with regard to the situation of Roma into practice. The NGO Decade Watch concluded in April that this failure resulted from a lack of political will. The NGO Agentia de Dezvoltare Comunitară Împreună had reported in February that implementation of the National Roma Strategy was inadequate due to lack of funding of measures at the county level and lack of indicators to allow monitoring of the different bodies involved.

Right to education

In a response to complaints against segregation of Romani pupils in schools, the Ministry of Education issued an internal guideline in March. This targeted school inspectorates, kindergartens, school principals and teachers and imposed a set of rules for the prevention and elimination of segregation of Romani pupils in the educational system.

• In May, the Court of Appeal in Craiova upheld the decision of the lower court that a Romani pupil had faced discrimination from her teacher and raised damages awarded from 360 to 10,000 euros. In 2007, the teacher had refused to let the Romani girl attend classes. After several weeks, an intervention by the local school inspectorate and pressure from local media allowed the girl to return to school.

Housing rights

In August, the CERD Committee called on Romania to facilitate access of Roma to housing and to avoid unlawful expropriation and forced evictions without offering alternative accommodation.

• Approximately 75 Roma, including families with children, who had been forcibly evicted by the local authorities in Miercurea Ciuc in 2004, continued to live in metal mobile cabins next to a sewage treatment plant on the outskirts of the town. The cabins were overcrowded, and sanitation facilities were woefully inadequate, with only four toilet cubicles for the entire community. Despite promises at the time that the cabins would be temporary, by the end of the year the local authorities had still not provided adequate alternative accommodation.
• On 10 June, the Deputy Mayor of the town of Baia Mare announced a plan to evict approximately 200 Romani families from the Craica area of the town and demolish their homes. According to local NGOs, some of the families received notification of the eviction in February, but it was not carried out due to weather conditions. Individuals and families not originally from Baia Mare were reportedly to be sent back to their original place of residence.
• On 17 December, 56 Roma families were forcibly evicted from Coastei Street in the city of Cluj. About 40 families were relocated to housing units that did not meet the criteria for adequate housing, and the remaining families were made homeless by the eviction.

Torture and other ill-treatment

Concerns of inadequate implementation of the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment persisted, in particular with regard to the failure to prohibit the use of evidence gathered under torture or other ill-treatment in the criminal code, despite amendments in May.

In August, the CERD Committee noted excessive use of force and ill-treatment by law enforcement officials against minorities, and Roma in particular. Local NGOs also expressed concerns about continuing reports of torture and other ill-treatment in detention, and an ongoing climate of impunity in some cases.

• In June, the European Court of Human Rights found Romania in breach of the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment in the case of Dragoş Ciupercescu represented by the Romanian Helsinki Committee (APADOR-CH). In 2003 while in pre-trial detention, Dragoş Ciupercescu had been subjected to strip-searches carried out by masked wardens, and held in a nine-bed cell together with 19 other prisoners where each of them had 0.75m2 of living space.
• In July, the European Court of Human Rights held that Romania had violated the prohibition of torture and failed to carry out an effective investigation into a death, thereby also violating the right to a remedy. The case involved Gabriel Carabulea, a Romani man who died in police custody in May 1996. In an investigation into the case, the military prosecutor had determined in 1998 that the man had died of heart disease. The European Court concluded that his death resulted from a blunt force trauma which he suffered after the arrest and that the injuries appeared to have been inflicted upon him intentionally.

Counter-terror and security

In February, a UN Study on secret detention concluded that a plane operating within the CIA’s rendition programme flew from Poland to Romania on 22 September 2003. In response, the Romanian authorities acknowledged that several planes leased by the CIA made stopovers in Romania, but denied that the planes had carried detainees or that the country had hosted a secret detention site.

In July, the Polish Border Guard Office released information about the flight on 22 September 2003 which loaded passengers in Poland and flew to Romania. The government continued to deny any involvement in the CIA’s rendition and secret detention programme.