I am today doing something
unique in the blog’s 10 year life – commenting on an apparent murder case and
the anger it has aroused in the troubled society of Romania in which I have
been living for the past few years. For more than a week now, television programmes have had endless, back-to-back discussion of the tragedy – with camera shots
lingering over the details of gardens and fields as various searches were
conducted.
The blog has covered aspects
of Romanian society and politics on numerous occasions – the last being this fairly comprehensive post on the
country’s problems a
couple of months ago.
I am moved to offer this
coverage of what is actually at least two murders because it reveals very
starkly aspects of the “deep state” in this part of the world – and the huge
difficulties facing those who want to hold that system to account
The initial source of my
information is a post on the issue from a journalist friend of mine who runs the Bridge of Friendship blog. On this occasion he was sharing an
important article (in a Bulgarian-based journal called “Baricada”) written by a Romanian journalist Maria Cernat. And my long-suffering Romanian
partner, Daniela, has helped me make (some sort of) sense of the issue and
its significance.
Nothing is ever as it seems
here – and I have therefore added some “editorial” comments to the excerpts
I have selected from the “Baricada” article which is very-well written and should be read in its
entirety…..
Romania has been in a
state of shock for more than a week, after a 15-year old girl – Alexandra
Măceşanu, from the southern city of Caracal, was killed on July 25th. Alexandra
had gone to a larger city for private lessons. Due to Romania’s general lack of
public transport, she was forced to hitchhike back home. The government recently
eliminated free regional transport and now private transport companies
aren’t obligated to service routes which don’t generate a profit. That is how she was abducted by a 57-year old automobile
mechanic, Gheorghe Dincă, who operated an unlicensed taxi service. He took her
to a house in Caracal. In spite of the fact that Alexandra called the emergency
phone number 112 a few times, police didn’t manage to pinpoint her signal immediately,
and didn’t enter the house until the following morning, because of lack of
permission from the observing prosecutor. In the 19 hours between the first
call until police entered the house where she was being held, Alexandra was
repeatedly raped and then killed.
Curiously, the article does
not report on what happened next with Dinca being taken to the police station
where he demanded to speak with one particular policeman - with whom he was then allowed to speak for one hour and to whom he confessed not only the murder but
that he had burned her body (he also confessed to another murder with the
victim’s remains also being buried in his garden). There is presumably a
tape-recording of that hour’s highly irregular conversation – but we have to
ask why on earth it was ever allowed. It has certainly allowed all sorts of conspiracies to emerge and circulate about "collusion" of police and "mafia" and dark networks......
The burned remains were taken
to Bucharest and the victim’s DNA confirmed. Not surprisingly, however, the
family dispute these results. As indeed the defence lawyers might obviously
dispute the confession…..
I give these details simply to demonstrate the murky
aspects of the operation of the Romanian state….The article continues.....
The case has shaken
Romania not only because of the brutal abuse of the adolescent, but also
because state institutions acted with inexplicable slowness, which enabled the
criminal to follow his plan to completion. Alexandra phoned 112. It took the
police 19 hours to intervene……
Three months prior,
another young girl from the zone- Luiza Melencu, was killed by the same man.
This horrible fact was publicized, along with a 2012 human trafficking case at
the Deveselu military base. The base has been used by American air defence
since 2011.
Romanian society is even
more upset than it was in the case of the Colectiv nightclub fire, where more
than 60 people died. Now various answers are appearing in response to the
questions of who is to blame: some condemn the prosecutor, Cristian Ovidiu
Popescu, who didn’t permit Alexandra’s rescue, refusing to issue a warrant to
allow police access to the house. Police were made to wait for hours on the
doorstep of the criminal’s house. Popescu was lauded by the former
anti-corruption prosecution (DNA) chief, Laura Koveşi. To some people this
means that he is from the movement #rezist (which was a main force behind the
2017 protests in support of anti-corruption – note of the translator). But
others say that the police didn’t need a warrant, but could have entered the
house out of the need to save a life. In that case, the blame falls on the
Social Democratic party-ruled government.
The article doesn’t mention
that Popescu was sacked immediately the media got hold of this information and
a new prosecutor appointed who then seems to have enforced a 5-day closure of
the house before a proper search could be carried out. This beggars belief –
just imagine the outrage in northern Europe if a proper search was not carried
out until 5 days had elapsed!!
The audio of the victim’s
phone calls with the 112 emergency hotline operator and the police officer were
released recently. This has sparked a huge debate about ethical journalistic
standards since the parents initially agreed only to the printed version of the
phone calls being released. The audio is almost unbearable to listen to. Alexandra
called 112 three times. In one conversation she says she has been kidnapped and
raped and the police officer tells her to hang up because she’s keeping the
line busy and there are other people calling!
Then, as if this horror
was not enough, the press released the recording of a phone call between one
local chief of police and someone who is known in the city as a local head of
an organized crime network. The gangster criticized the police while the
officer humbly thanked him for his cooperation!
Ecaterina Andronescu, the
Minister of Education from the Social Democratic party, the party which
basically destroyed public transportation and left children such as Alexandra
at the mercy of people who own cars, was sacked. Andronescu declared that she
was taught as a child not to get into strangers’ cars! The cruelty of this
declaration knows no bounds since Alexandra had no means of transportation due
to the decisions of these politicians!
At this stage I have two
observations – the article
fails to mention that this “gangster” actually operates a security company (under
due legal authority) which is obliged to cooperate with the police and to
respond to any police requests for assistance. Indeed it was after such an
approach that the “gangster” actually identified and reported the perpetrator’s
car to the police – leading to the reported expression of gratitude! Security companies are, at the best of times, "shady enterprises" and I am not suggesting that its boss in this instance was a model citizen. But, in the unforgettable words of a political colleague of mine in the 1970s -
"we have to be careful with words - it's all we have!!"
My second point is that it is simply untrue to imply that
the Minister of Education “left children at the mercy of people who own cars”
since this is the Minister who actually initiated the system of school buses
some years ago…..But this tragedy happened during school holidays when that
system was suspended (as happens throughout Europe during the summer vacations)
Romanian journalists, it appears, can never miss an opportunity to take partisan shots…..
.
My previous posts on Romania
have emphasised what a divided society it is – in the last few years the country has become very polarised with the implicit attitude that "if you’re
not for us, you’re against us"
The neutral mugwumps who want fair reporting are simply crushed between the 2 forces.
But please read the full article to see how it places the murder as what Maria Cernat, the author, calls a "symptom of:
The neutral mugwumps who want fair reporting are simply crushed between the 2 forces.
But please read the full article to see how it places the murder as what Maria Cernat, the author, calls a "symptom of:
-
a
passive culture, in which neighbours
and family knew about Dincă’s violence against women (because he
had a history of domestic violence), but didn’t react;
-
a
profoundly vicious economic system, which generates inequalities that can be
fatal for those who lack the good fortune of being born to the privileged
elite;
-
the
reactionary attitudes of politicians, who want half-baked solutions to serious
problems – be it the #rezist camp, which seems to be inescapably locked into a
pathetic slogan, “F*ck PSD” (PSD being the ruling Social Democratic Party –
note of the translator)
-
the
way, in which tragedies such as this one, lead to solutions such as absurdly
giving the police even more force than they had before the tragedy;
-
an
apparent strange cohabitation between the institutions of force and the
thieves, who have
escaped justice miraculously in many cases;
-
the
trafficking of vulnerable persons, for whom gender and class are not simply
social traits, but social determiners that could easily sentence them to a
terrible death".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Forest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Forest