Romania Still Has Widespread Abuse, Corruption, Discrimination Issues – U.S. Report

The government addressed some human rights problems during the year; however, abuses continued to occur. There were reports of police and gendarme harassment and mistreatment of detainees and Roma, the report said.

 

Although slightly improved over previous years, prison conditions remained poor and are generally not in line with European Union standards. At the end of the year, 29,335 persons, including 525 minors, were in prison or juvenile detention facilities in a system with a capacity of 34,000. Unlike in previous years, overcrowding did not represent a serious problem.

 

The judiciary exercised its independence, but lacked the public’s trust in its ability to impartially apply the law.

 

In the second chapter of the report, with respect to civil liberties, the U.S. State Department notes the Romanian law provides for freedom of speech and of the press, and the government generally respected these rights in practice. However, there were cases of authorities intimidating or censoring the press, or attacking journalists, although this occurred substantially less frequently than in previous years.  

 

The new religion law that went into effect in January includes a provision that forbids acts of "religious defamation" and "public offense to religious symbols." NGOs and the Anti-discrimination council expressed concern that this provision broadly interpreted could infringe on freedom of speech and conscience.

 

Corruption in Romania remains widespread, the report notes. The National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) ndicted 201 defendants in 89 cases during the first half of the year, including several former and current officials at senior levels of government. During the year it began investigations of three current ministers and three former ministers in four cases.

 

The report adds the Romanian government ordered the intelligence services to release the files of the Communist-era Securitate intelligence service, but many observers claimed the review of individual files of officials by the National College for the Study of Securitate Archives (CNSAS) served only select political interests. There was broad speculation that the continued presence of former Securitate members in the intelligence services and among the political parties hindered release of these files.

 

There also were reports that local authorities occasionally impeded journalists, NGOs, and the general public from accessing public information that could have proved detrimental to select political interests.