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Romania honors 'heroes' of 1989 |
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Tuesday, 22 December 2009 |
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Romanian activists on Monday called for honouring the victims of the
country's December 1989 anti-communist revolt, as re-elected President
Traian Basescu was sworn into office, paying homage to their
"sacrifice", AFP reports.
"We are calling on all Bucharesters to
honour the heroes who gave their lives for our freedom," said a
statement from the association December 21, representing those who
helped bring down communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
"Twenty years ago, Romanians vanquished the all-invasive fear and rose up against the communist regime," the statement said.
On
December 21 and 22, 1989, some 48 people were shot dead in downtown
Bucharest when Romania's army and the secret police, the Securitate,
opened fire on peaceful protesters. Several thousand more were injured,
arrested and tortured.
Previously, protests had erupted in
Timisoara, the western Romanian city that has become a symbol of the
revolution. There too, the crackdown took its toll, with about a 100
dead and several hundred injured.
A total of 1,104 Romanians
were killed during the events: 162 before Ceausescu fled from power on
December 22, and another 942 after that date.
On Monday, about 300 mostly young people marched in the centre of Bucharest, in memory of the victims of the revolt.
They
chanted "freedom, freedom", "glory to the heroes". Some of them who
gathered on University square, one of the hotspots of the revolution,
were carrying banners with the names of those who were killed on
December 21, 1989.
Apart from Ceausescu and his wife Elena,
tried and executed in December 1989, few of the former communist
leaders have been sentenced to prison.
Taking his oath for a
second five-year term in office, Basescu paid homage to roughly "a
thousand Romanians who gave their lives for freedom" in December 1989.
"Their
sacrifice is the cornerstone of today's democratic institutions," he
said, regretting that "Romanian society has the impression that all the
truth has not been said and the culprits have not been punished.
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