The failure to carry out the act of justice regarding the crimes committed during the Revolution of December 1989 remains a critical point of our society, declared President Klaus Iohannis, in a message sent on December 22, on the occasion of the Victory Day of the Romanian Revolution of 1989.
“The fact that even up to this moment the Justice has not identified and punished the culprits for the crimes committed during the Revolution only serves to maintain feelings of pain and frustration. In the absence of justice, the massacres committed against the civilian population will remain wounds that will never heal,” said the head of state.
In the message sent by Iohannis, “December 1989 represents the moment that definitively changed the course of Romania. Through the faith and will of the Romanians who no longer endured the humiliations of the communist regime, our country moved irreversibly towards democracy, a path we have undertaken for almost three and a half decades”.
The head of state also showed that in Romania, “dramatically, in December 1989, communism could only be removed after, until its last moment, it indulged in violence, abuses and crimes, the same weapons that led to its establishment in power”.
“The blood shed and the lives sacrificed for freedom cannot be forgotten, and the sacrifice of the heroes who freed us from the tyranny of communism will forever remain in our national memory. The noblest way we can honor those who gave their lives so that we can be free is to protect democracy and the rule of law and reject any form of extremism and populism,” added Klaus Iohannis.
Iohannis also showed that “although we live in difficult times, in which the entire European continent suffers from the consequences of the war on our borders, it is inconceivable that generations who had the chance not to know the horrors of totalitarianism fall prey to the communist nostalgic discourse”.
However, against the background of the instability of the last period, the economic difficulties, the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the populist discourse tries to question the values of the present. Such dangerous visions affect us all and may gain ground amid current challenges.
“After 33 years since the overthrow of communism, we must categorically reject the distortion of the truth about our recent past and the evocation of feelings of nostalgia related to this period. The communist regime was a criminal, repressive and abusive one! Under the dictatorship, Romanians lived in terror, cold and darkness in a prison society, isolated from the rest of Europe and the world, deprived of rights and freedoms. Hundreds of thousands of citizens of our homeland perished in prisons, hundreds of thousands more sought freedom in exile, risking their lives and exposing their families to the harshest consequences,” the message also states.