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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Fri Jan 20, 2012, 01:54 PM Jan 2012

Romania Who are the Indignados of Bucharest?

http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/1416691-who-are-indignados-bucharest

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Romania's "Indignados", at University Square, Bucharest
AFP

Thousands of people from all walks of life have been demonstrating all week in Bucharest as well as all over the country against both austerity measures and a political system gangrened by corruption. It is about time that the government took their complaints seriously, warns Romanian sociologist
It is perhaps the most diversified demonstration ever seen in Romania. As much for the variety of the participants (pensioners, students, revolutionaries, intellectuals, the unemployed, football fans, singers, etc.), as by their demands and complaints which concern salaries, pensions, the circulation tax, the dismantling of political parties, the exploitation of gold on Roşia Montană, independence from international finance, or the resignation of President Traian Băsescu. But there is one common denominator: outrage.

The diversity of the type of demonstrators implies a similar behavioural diversity. Unlike April 1990 [when demonstrations were stopped due to violent clashes with miners brought in from Valea Jiului by the government of then-president, Ion Iliescu] University Square in Bucharest is today no longer peopled mostly by intellectuals with their civic conscience and their art of dialogue as cultivated in learned symposia.

These days, among the rebels, one finds those living on the fringe of society, youth gangs – they too are malcontent at not finding work, at the lowering of social protection, at the rising cost of living, at the fact that the police protects loan sharks and pimps but rakes them over the coals at the slightest blunder. Whether one likes it or not, they too are part of civil society.
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