Document Blog:
Coverage of the December 1989 events in Romania by New Zealand’s Press: A selection of media clippings from the digitized collections of the National Library of New Zealand
Anna Batzeli
Abstract
The Revoluția română that led to the fall of Ceaușescu brought Romania into the international media spotlight, with reporters, even from as far away as New Zealand, covering the country’s developments on a daily basis. Studying these reports deepens our understanding of the global and diverse narratives surrounding these events, as well as their broader impact. This blog briefly presents a selection of media clippings from the digitized collections of the National Library of New Zealand, offering an introduction to the topic. Its aim is to encourage further use of these collections by historians and researchers.
Key words
Romania, New Zealand, Fall of Ceausescu.
Despite the geographical distance, New Zealand reporters provided substantial coverage of the events that unfolded in Romania in 1989, which culminated in the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu after 24 years of rule. The digitized newspaper archives of the National Library of New Zealand yield app. 500 results referencing Romania within the span of a single month. In the following paragraphs, a selection of these articles is presented with the aim of offering an overview of the media coverage of the Revoluția română from a New Zealand perspective.
1. Romanians “afraid to speak out’
The first two articles aim to inform the New Zealand audience, in an accessible way, about the causes of the violent civil unrest and what life was like in Romania under the Ceaușescu regime. To this end, the first article attempts to briefly present key developments in Romania since the early 1980s, along with the social, political, and economic struggles the country faced. The second article features testimonies from Romanians living in New Zealand, as well as frequent visitors to Romania. These accounts offer first-hand insights and enabled readers of New Zealand newspapers to better understand the challenging circumstances civilians in Romania were experiencing:
| Ceausescu: last of the old-style autocrats
The Romanian President, Nicolae Ceausescu, is the last oldstyle East European Communist autocrat to resist the liberalising wave that ended the 1980s. In his 24 years of rule, Romania, potentially one of Europe’s richest agricultural areas with ample crude oil supplies, has been reduced to one of its poorest States by his economic policies and headlong rush to industrialise. Mr Ceausescu was on a State visit to Iran yesterday as Romania closed its borders. Stiff foreign criticism followed his announcement in 1988 that thousands of villages would be eliminated and replaced by new agro-industrial centres, a move ostensibly aimed at raising the standard of living of country people. As the decade ends, he faces increasing international isolation and growing pressure at home. Thousands of workers rioted in Brasov, central Romania, in 1987 over food shortages and civil rights and two years later six former top communist officials wrote him an open letter attacking his rule. Mr Ceausescu established a personality cult around himself and his immediate family unparalleled since Stalinist days, and the State-run news media painted a picture of well-being that contrasted starkly with the deprivations of everyday life. On his seventieth birthday in 1988 he was hailed by the heavily-controlled press as “the greatest Romanian in history.” From the first years of his rule in the mid-1960s he adopted an independent foreign policy welcomed in the West. Although keeping Romania a member of the Warsaw Pact alliance and the trading group Comecon, Mr Ceausescu was wooed at various times by the United States, Western Europe and China. But in the 1980s, his human rights record soured relations with the West and the crisis at home forced him economically closer to his socialist allies. In 1982 and 1983, reeling from the effects of soaring raw material costs that hit his overstretched industrialisation programme, Mr Ceausescu was forced to reschedule Western debts. He began a breakneck programme to repay the $US11 billion debt, cutting investment and creating desperate food and energy shortages.[1] |
| Romanians “afraid to speak out’
Romanians living in Wellington are convinced there will be a further massacre in their homeland and many will not speak publicly for fear of endangering families at home. One man, who left Romania in 1948, said that people were so fearful of the Romanian Government they could not even speak honestly with family. He has a sister and other family in Romania and was sure if he spoke publicly they could lose their jobs as the Government was the only employer. Every apartment block had a family employed by Government security, spying on other residents. Another man, who has no family left in Romania, spoke freely. Mr John Fotiadis, a frequent visitor to Romania, agreed people could not speak honestly or trust each other. “People are too afraid of each other to talk. You don’t know with whom you are talking.” Even trusted people could have a “loose mouth.” All items were in short supply; Television ran for about two hours a day, but showed only propaganda; electricity was on for about four hours a day; hot water was rationed and even cold water was turned off during the night. “Everyone collects water in bath tubs,” he said. “In heavy winter with no electricity, no gas, you imagine what life is like there. “You go to a shop and can’t find anything. You can wait for hours to get a couple of eggs or a bottle of milk. Everyone is getting fed from the black market.” Mr Fotiadis was convinced that reports of 400 people dead were true and that more would be massacred.. He believed the Romanian President Mr Nicolae Ceausescu, would never give up. Mr Ceausescu and his high security -people were scared of what had happened in East Germany and Hungary, but security was better organised in Romania and was a system of terror, he said. “How can you organise an uprising when you don’t trust anybody … your father or sister?[2] |
2. Reports of killings during the unrest
During the Revoluția română, countless reports appeared in the international media about the killing of thousands of civilians by security forces. While the numbers vary from source to source, it is widely accepted that the death toll was significant. Among those killed were foreign reporters who had traveled to Romania to cover the events. In addition to reports of the killings, calls for humanitarian assistance for those affected circulated globally, and official statements were issued by governments urging Ceaușescu to stop using violence against civilians. The next group of selected clippings offers an overview of these developments. Of particular interest is the official statement made by New Zealand’s ambassador in Vienna:
| Romania tightens grip near frontiers
The Romanian President, Nicolae Ceausescu, resisting protests against his rule, has clamped a state of emergency on an area where foreign news reports said -security forces killed up to 4000 people last week-end. His hard-line Government, resisting a wave of demands for reform that has swept old-guard Communists from power across most of Eastern Europe, banned meetings of more than five people and night-time movement in the western area of Timis near the Yugoslav and Hungarian frontiers. The emergency was declared because of “the serious violation of public order in Timis county through acts -of terrorism, vandalism and destruction of public assets,” the State news agency, Agerpres, said. The Yugoslav news media said 50,000 people “marched yesterday through the main town in Timis, Timisoara, where the police -and troops crushed pro-democracy demonstrations on Sunday. Between 3000 and 4000 people were killed in the bloodbath and many were buried in mass graves,” according to the East German news agency, Adn, quoting Romanians living in East Germany after “telephone contact with relatives back home. In one incident, the Romanian police massacred 36 children carrying candles in an appeal for bread, peace and human dignity in front of Timisoara’s cathedral during the week-end bloodbath, Yugoslavia’s Tanjug news agency said. Hospitals in Timisoara were overflowing with wounded and protests had taken place in at least eight other towns, according to reports by East European news agencies and radios. Romania’s borders were sealed. Mr Ceausescu, aged 71, who has ruled Romania for 24 years, yesterday blamed the Timisoara clashes on foreign influence and rebuffed world-wide condemnation by defending his security forces crackdown. In a televised address after returning to Bucharest from a visit to Iran, he blamed the trouble on “anti-national, terrorist groups” linked to “reactionary, imperialist, irredentist, chauvinist circles and foreign espionage services.” The Hungarian Foreign Minister, Gyula Horn, told Parliament earlier that Romania was claiming in an internal order that Hungary was behind the demonstrations and was planning an “armed provocation” against Romania. He dismissed the charge. “These groups’ aim was to provoke disorder and destroy institutions and general assets of the city and to give a signal for such actions in other centres as well,” Mr Ceausescu said. He expressed regret over the situation but absolved the security forces of any blame. They had shown “maximum patience and tolerance” and had reacted only in self-defence, he said. Reports said that troops, identified by Hungarian Government officials as attached to the feared Securitate secret police, fired automatic weapons indiscriminately into demonstrators who included women and children. The Timisoara clashes sparked protests in other towns against Mr Ceausescu’s harsh rule and rejection of reforms that have forced old-guard Communists from power in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria this year. A Soviet Parliamentarian from Moldavia, once part of Romania, said yesterday that protests were still going on in Arad, lasi and other towns. Hungarian radio quoted Romanian youths who crossed into Hungary illegally yesterday as saying young people had begun to organise themselves in several towns, circulating leaflets and obtaining weapons. Demonstrators were demanding the return of bodies of people killed on Sunday, some of whom were reported to have been buried in a mass grave in a forest at the edge of town, the radio said.[3] |
| Reporter crushed by tank in Romania
A French television reporter was killed and four foreign journalists were wounded during the week-end while covering the fierce fighting in Romania between revolutionaries and loyalists of deposed President Nicolae Ceausescu. Jean-Louis Calderon of France’s La Cinq station was crushed to death by a tank in Bucharest as he was reporting on the fighting. Calderon, aged 31, was outside the Communist Party Central Committee building in the capital when he was killed. Medicine, drugs and food from around the world have started arriving in Romania, but the National Salvation Front Government says the ravaged’ country still needs more. “The Council welcomes with gratitude any humanitarian help — medical assistance, drugs, food — in these difficult moments and informs that such humanitarian aid has already arrived here from France, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary,” said Romania’s Agerpres news agency. Governments and relief organisations are marshalling massive amounts of supplies to help victims of the bloody revolution that toppled the President, Nicolae Ceausescu, at a cost of thousands dead and wounded. “The whole of Europe is rushing to help,” said a spokesman for the Red Cross in Spain. International Red Cross headquarters in Geneva was coordinating assistance from around the world. Reports from the capital that fighting between pro-Ceausescu forces and rebel army units backing the new government were slackening gave rise to optimism more aid would get through.”[4] |
| N.Z. to chide Romania
New Zealand’s Ambassador in Vienna will tell the Romanian Government of New Zealand’s dismay at the deaths in the latest clampdown by Romanian authorities, the Prime Minister, Mr Palmer, said yesterday. He said he was shocked and dismayed at news reports of repression and widescale deaths after a violent clampdown by Romanian authorities. “This is the latest incident in a long catalogue of human rights abuses in Romania,” he said. “The Romanian Government’s policies of rural systemisation, the treatment of Hungarian and German minorities and generally declining standards of cultural, economic and social rights add up to a dismal human rights record.”[5] |
3. Romanians break free
This brief overview concludes with a selection of articles that examine the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime and the response of the New Zealand Government. Of particular interest in these articles are the diverse narratives and perceptions that researchers can identify, as well as the global impact of the developments in Romania:
| Execution ends 24-year tyranny
Romania’s reviled Communist ruler Nicolae Ceausescu subjected his people to a tyrannical dictatorship for 24 years, resisting the wave of reform sweeping Eastern Europe until he was overthrown by a popular uprising and executed on Christmas Day. Ceausescu and his wife Elena were arrested on Friday as they tried to flee Romania. The authorities then announced the dictator had escaped before being recaptured some hours later. They were executed on Monday after a secret trial which found them guilty of genocide and other crimes. During his years in power, Ceausescu put family members in key jobs — establishing a cult of personality which ran Romania under the guise of Communist ideology. Romania, potentially one of Europe’s richest agricultural areas with ample crude oil supplies, was reduced by Ceausescu to one of its poorest States by his economic policies and headlong rush to industrialise. A peasant’s son, born in Scornicesti village outside Bucharest on January 26, 1918, Ceausescu joined the then illegal Communist Party at 14 after elementary school. He had spells in prison in the 1930s and during World War 11, when Romania was occupied by the Nazis, and held various posts in the Soviet-backed post-war Communist government. The “Ceausescu Epoch,” as his rule was officially called, began in 1965 when he became party leader after the death of the First Secretary, Gheorghe Gheorgiu-dej. At 47, he was the East Bloc’s youngest leader. He became head of state in 1975. His reputation as a maverick dated from 1968 when he openly condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring reform movement. He refused to commit his own forces to Warsaw Pact manoeuvres abroad and did not allow exercises by foreign troops on Romanian territory. He made friends with China during the Sino-Soviet split, did not join other Communist States in breaking diplomatic relations with Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and condemned the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. After Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet leader in 1985, Ceausescu declined to countenance his reforms, rejecting any role for market forces, sticking to his rigid centrally-planned economy and enforcing his plans with an iron will. Stiff foreign criticism followed his announcement in 1988 that thousands of villages would be eliminated and replaced by new agro-industrial centres, a move ostensibly aimed at raising the standard of living of country people. But Romanians were sick of his single-minded determination to push through his own poorly-thought-out economic ideas.[6] |
| Romanians break free
A month ago President Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania was dutifully applauded by 3200 delegates at the Romanian Communist Party’s Congress in Bucharest. The President spoke for five hours while his security forces imposed a virtual standstill on movement in the capital. Today, it seems clear, the former president and his family are prisoners of a popular uprising after three days of bitter fighting in one of Eastern Europe’s few remaining pockets of hard-line communism. Thousands have died in Romania in the last week as security forces tried, and failed, to maintain in office the Ceausescu family and their personal brand of communism. The last of the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact allies in Europe has turned away from dictatorship. The price has been high. Romania is desperate for food, and for medical relief for victims of the fighting. Help is flowing in, from East and West, as Romania’s churches open for a Christmas of freedom and mourning. Not the least startling aspect of the startling changes in Poland and East Germany, in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria, had been the peaceful manner in which communist regimes surrendered their monopoly on power in recent months. Romanians have paid a much higher price for following other East European countries towards democracy. Their popular revolution, headed by a National Salvation Front, could now go further, and faster, than the democratic changes among their neighbours. Romania has long been a maverick among Balkan and East European countries. It has border quarrels with its neighbours in the Soviet Union and Hungary as a result of the boundaries imposed by the Russian Army in 1945. Romania’s communist neighbours, like the rest of the world, are expressing delight that repression there appears to have ended. Those neighbours must also feel concern about what the Romanians are likely to do next. The Romanian uprising must carry a message, too, for the handful of hard-line communist States that remain elsewhere in the world. The list is getting shorter — China, Albania and Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam. Even the Soviet Union itself, creeping towards reforms under Mr Gorbachev, must feel alarm at this example on its borders of what happens when. repression is used to stifle a popular revolution. The message from Eastern Europe this year is overwhelming — once a popular -uprising begins, the communists, be they liberal or hard-line, cannot hold on to the power they have built up by force and repression. The omens for a happy new year in the Kremlin do not look bright.[7] |
| Govt condemns hasty killings
The New Zealand Government has condemned the execution without public trial of Romania’s former leaders, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. The duty Cabinet Minister, Mr Tapsell, said that while the “sheer desperation and frustration” of the Romanian people could be understood, “in no way do we condone the arbitrary execution of anyone, least of all former leaders.” The executions were a tragedy for Romania and the freedom movement, Mr Tapsell said. “There is no question that this Government would support a proper trial functioning under the rule of law, but no way do we condone arbitrary execution by military courts.” It was a tragedy there had been such loss of life during the revolution, he said. Mr Tapsell said the Government was monitoring the situation in Romania but was yet to recognise the new provisional Government established under President lon Iliescu. The Soviet Ambassador in Wellington, Mr Yuri Sokolov, said his country supported the freedom movement in Romania. “I think it was perhaps one of the last strongholds of totalitarianism, I hope, in the world.” Mr Sokolov said he would have expected the Romanians to have held a public trial of the Ceausescus, but he was not upset that that had not happened.”[8] |
Image: Two Bucharest grocery store workers pack coffee beans. Coffee is on sale for the first time in many years in Romania. Source: Press, 30 December 1989, Page 10.
[1] Quoted in Press, 20 December 1989, Page 8.
[2] Quoted in Press, 21 December 1989, Page 1.
[3] Quoted in Press, 22 December 1989, Page 9.
[4] Quoted in Press, 26 December 1989, Page 8.
[5] Quoted in Press, 23 December 1989, Page 9.
[6] Quoted in Press, 27 December 1989, Page 8.
[7] Quoted in Press, 26 December 1989, Page 12.
[8] Quoted in Press, 28 December 1989, Page 1.
