vrabia:

books-and-cookies:

books-and-cookies:

books-and-cookies:

books-and-cookies:

books-and-cookies:

books-and-cookies:

books-and-cookies:

freakinfishtank:

books-and-cookies:

books-and-cookies:

books-and-cookies:

The Romanian government just decriminalised official misconduct.

This essentially makes corruption legal.

what is life

fuckers passed the law in the middle of the night

despite protests being held against this in the last two weeks

there were more than 100k people on the streets a few days ago

i can’t even

I’m shaking with rage. A huge number of politicians will have their criminal records thrown out. People who have cause state prejudice of millions of dollars (they’re estimating a total of almost one billion). People who have tried to rig the votes in the last presidential election. The officials who had done the inspection in the Colectiv club before the fire that claimed 64 lives last year will be off their charges too.

I’m numb.

Is this for real? What the fuck.

Here’s an article in the Washington Post

New York Times

Financial Times

Protests are being organized throughout the country. I’m so worried that violence may break out, despite the fact that all protests so far have been peaceful.

There are 175.000 people out in the streets in the entire country. I’m hoping this changes something.

Over 300.000 at the moment.
It’s the biggest protest in Romania in the last 25 years.

HUGE THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS BEEN SHARING THIS

Update 02.02.2017: 

There were some incidents at the protest in Bucharest last night, some bands of people have become violent towards the police forces, throwing firecrackers and other blunt objects towards them. This determined the police to ask all protesters to go home, so that the situation doesn’t escalate. They also used tear gas on the instigators. 4 people were injured.

I want to stress that this is not how the protest should be seen. The majority of the people is peaceful and this is the sole incident so far. The crowd condemned the actions of these aggressors, shouting “Not like this!”.

The protests will continue tonight. The people, along with the president, the Superior Council of Magistracy, the attorney general, the European Union and the embassies of several countries are asking the repeal of the emergency ordinance that would decriminalise official misconduct. 

Some foreign coverage:

BBC  USA Today  The Globe and Mail  

Deutsche Welle  Reuters                 The Guardian  Foreign Policy

Bucharest, 01.02.2017:

(source)

  • 200,000+ protesters last night as well and another protest announced for tonight (feb. 3) people basically said that they’ll be out in the streets as long as they have to
  • these are the biggest protests in romania since the 1989 revolution that brought down ceausescu’s communist regime
  • the social-democrat party (psd), responsible for doing this, came into power again at the end of last year with the support of less than 20% of total voters (given a turnout of 39.5% THIS IS WHAT FUCKING HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON’T GET OFF YOUR ASS AND VOTE)
  • prime minister sorin grindeanu, essentially a mouthpiece for head of psd liviu dragnea, said that he has no plans to repeal the decrees and will not resign even after massive protests and criticism from other eu members. he has unanimous support from his party.
  • liviu dragnea (in practice very much prime minister right now) on the protests:
  • interior minister carmen dan publicly singled out several journalists and opposition politicians as ‘instigators’ in the protests (link in romanian)
  • some of the people who will benefit from these decrees are under investigation for (link in romanian) are under investigation for large-scale electoral fraud and literal fucking murder. as in, their actions killed people, and not like 20 years ago. it happened in 2015. 
  • FUN TRIVIA: did you know the european commission said that if this continues it will affect the amount of funding romania gets from the eu 
  • basically it sucks and i’m going to take this opportunity to explain to all you tumblr ~pastel communists once again that this level of entrenched corruption that puts convicts in office and openly decriminalizes fraud, theft and yup, potentially actual murder, is the heritage of 5 decades of communist rule 

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