The more I learn about history, the more I get my blood boiling.
There was a passage in my country's history that I didn't know much of, I would hear about it sometimes on TV but nothing more. It's never talked about in history class. The most common words I would hear linked to this event were "mineriad" , "Ion Iliescu" , "protests" , "students" , "violence" , "miners" ...
So I was wondering to myself, what the hell were these mineriads? (Or whatever is the plural of this word).
I searched about it today. There isn't much information about it which is kinda funny because it was an event that had a huge impact on how Romania developed after and you can see its consequences even today. It was also a very bloody event and the first one happened months after the revolution.
So I gathered from the views of people who went through it.
Ion Iliescu and his party called FSN came into power after revolution, but there were many doubts regarding the legitimacy of the new government and president. Ion Iliescu is known to had ties with communism , even since an early age because his father had communist views. He also had studied in Moscow and it's said that he met Gorbachev. He also had been in the Communist Party here.
These doubts only grew stronger and after the May elections in 1990 a series of protests have been started by people, many of them students, in the University Square in Bucharest in order to defend the authentic democracy and to criticize Iliescu administration.
Iliescu who was obviously not happy about this, came up with a brutal idea. He called the miners from Jiu Valley to come in Bucharest to put a stop to the protests so that there is no opposition. He called the protesters fascists and a threat to the country.
And so they did it and what followed was tragic. Not only they beat the protesters until they died or remained in a coma, but they also had the audacity to beat even those who had nothing to do with it. They were beating even people who minded their own business. They were beating anyone they put their eyes on. It was absolutely terrifying to walk on the streets of Bucharest back then. There are people who recall seeing others being beat up brutally by those miners and them not being able to forget it.
What's even worse is that this wasn't the only mineriad. There were other 6 of them, which stretched throughout the 90s.
After this I have come to the conclusion that Iliescu was the most evil person at the end of 20th century in Romania. He was accused of crimes against humanity after the mineriads.
However, the law system here doesn't do shit regarding the mineriads. It's all a vague shitshow. The case is closed, opened, then closed again, then opened and so on. They just play ping pong with it at this point.
Those who had their lives destroyed or were killed as a consequence of the actions of a sadist communist will probably never see justice. And Iliescu? He's a fossil at this point, he's over 90 years old and probably spending life in luxury and warmth, defended by the criminal authorities that keep on his corrupt communist legacy. Fuck the law system, fuck everything.
And so this is the history of the mineriads, presented briefly so that people get an idea of what happened. I'll try to find an English source that could present it in detail.
In about a week a new post with WW2 photos will follow. Also can't wait to tell about the day of 24th January 1859 and my favorite Romanian historical figure: Alexandru Ioan Cuza.
