[Oberlist] RO* the "new" Romania

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---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [incepem] Fw: Fwd: the "new" Romania
From:    "Vlad Nanc&#259;" <vladnanca la yahoo.com>
Date:    Mon, April 7, 2008 14:38
To:      "incepem all" <incepem la yahoogroups.com>
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----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Ana-Maria Hadji-Culea <amhadjiculea la gmail.com>
To: amhadjiculea la gmail.com
Sent: Monday, 7 April, 2008 1:17:27 PM
Subject: Fwd: the "new" Romania

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: h. arta <harta.harta la gmail.com>
Date: 7 Apr 2008 11:56
Subject: the "new" Romania
To:

Dear friends!

We have just returned from Bucharest, where between 2-4 of april took
place the biggest NATO summit in history. Some people, (between 50 and
100) wanted to express their opinions about this summit, about war and
militarization and a space was rented in Bucharest as a place for
discussion, workshops, projections (and, in the "worst"case and only in
the opinion of some of the participants, as a starting point for peaceful,
quiet march in the city,in the conditions in which any public
manifestation, no matter as peacefull, was oficially forbidden during the
summit ). On the 2nd of april, the first day of summit, the riot police
entered this space, beaten up people and arrested everybody inside without
any legal basis, just on the presumption that "something might happen".
Later on that day they had to release everybody, as a consequence of the
interventions of human rights groups and of people piqueting the police
stations. But even if the detained people
 were released, the surveillance and the threats from the part of police
continued.

It would be quit a lot to say about what happened there, about the
atmosphere of terror, about the mass-media campaign that started weeks
before the summit to construct an image of the "dangerous anarchists" that
will destroy the city and our image of nice, obeying country, about people
denied entry at the border on the reason that they had on them flyers
against NATO and against violence, about the harassment of the people
involved and also of their families and friends, about the surveillance of
phones and internet activity made official and legal, etc. If you are
interested you can read about these on indymedia romania site
(http://romania.indymedia.org/) and also in other independent media.

We wanted to tell you also about what is happening to us. In September
2007, we were part of a project called Spatiul Public Bucuresti | Public
Art Bucharest 2007 (http://www.projectspacebucharest.blogspot.com/,
www.spatiul-public.ro), project in the frame of which we conceived and
organized the events of a Project Space. Some of the people with whom we
worked at Project Space were also involved in organizing a program of
cultural events in reaction to the NATO summit in Bucharest. During the
anti NATO protests in Bucharest and now, after we have return to Timisoara
we realized that we were under the observation of the secret police even
since September when we were working at the Project Space. Our phones are
listened to, we are followed on the street (and our followers don't even
hide) and we have just discovered some strange connections in our laptops
which allow remote access to all the data inside to some persons that we
don't know (we used our
 laptops during Project Space events and many people had access to them).

Although it is definitely distressful to know that you are constantly
watched, it is not the case that they could find the evidence of any
illegal activity whatsoever from our part. The only thing that we did, and
that we will continue doing, is to express our citizen right to the
freedom of speech. And only because of this, our private lives are wide
opened to the eyes of some people payed from our tax money to harass us.
The only reaction we can think off is to make this harassment as visible
as possible, to tell everyone about it. This is the reason of this email.

One of the main critiques of Romanian communism is in relation to the
constant surveillance, to the fact that you could not trust anybody and
that all your moves and all your words were constantly observed. Now, when
in our country any idea of the Left is so righteously condemned as
"totalitarian" and "communist" with the purpose to reinforce even more
capitalism as the only possible alternative, the constant surveillance is
still part of the everyday life. It is enough to state publicly your
opinions and you will be subjected to the same sort of surveillance as
before 1989, even if now we are living the "freedom" times of capitalism.

Best wishes from us!
Maria, Rodica, Anca
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