The NATO summit in Bucharest took place between April 2-4. Activists from Romania and abroad organized “Anti-NATO Days” between March 28 and April 5, as a form of protest. What follows is a daily chronology of events, starting with the repression and abuse by border guards, police and the mass-media, to the actions of solidarity by human rights organizations and foreign activists.

In Iasi it is very hard to organize any serious direct actions because of the bureaucracy, so one of the solutions for us as activists, or anarchists in particular, has been to get involved in some ngo’s and try to be as active as possible, and even try to get in contact with some open minded people to create alternatives and basically a network in our city, and why not, to promote our values and a different point of view to the people from those ngo’s.

Racism in football – the situation in Romania

19 March 2006 - Steaua Bucharest plays against FC National in the national football league in Romania. Razvan Lucescu, the coach of Rapid Bucharest, is forced to leave the stadium after 80 minutes of racist abuse. During the entire game, Steaua’s gallery yells racist chants against him: “go out you stinky crow”, “die gypsy” and “we hate the gypsies”.[1] He needs protection to leave the stadium. During the same match the captain of Steaua Bucharest, Mirel Radoi, racially abuses the Nigerian player of FC National, Agunbiande Abioudun[2], whom he repeatedly calls “crow” and “gipsy”.

Internationally March 8th is a Day of Women's Activism.
The day to celebrate those women to whose activism we owe the right to vote, the right to education, health care, contraception. Those who fought so that we, as women, would have the right to own property, the right to get a divorce. The right to choose and to say No!, when we decide that it's what's needed.

INCA cultural center in Timisoara, Romania is under threat of eviction by the city-government. The press statement follows and informations about protest actions in solidarity with INCA.

September 7th marks the 5 year anniversary of the assassination of Virgil Sahleanu, a trade union activist from Iasi, Romania. In the city of Iasi fliers will be distributed with information about the fraudulent privatization of the TEPRO industry in Iasi and Sahleanu's role in the battle against the Czech owners of TEPRO ... which eventually lead to his death.

The scandals that rocked the Romanian press last year were weirdly and differently interpreted. There are few who actually know and admit that Romania Libera, Evenimentul Zilei and Adevarul were episodes of colliding interests with important financial stakes. Former owners, who used to fill double positions as economic managers and editors, felt they were about to lose their power and reacted violently. We witnessed true displays of power, battles of media dinosaurs. The motor behind these manifestations are hidden facts that we now present for the first time.

On the night of August 2, 1944 2898 Romani men, women, and children were gassed at Auschwitz as Soviet troops closed in. Preceding it in January 1940 over 200 Romani children were murdered in Buchenwald, Germany, used as research subjects for the efficiency of the crystals of Zyclon B Gas later employed in the gas chambers.

More than 150 representatives of the social and political forces that organized in France and in the Netherlands the historical rejection of the EU Constitution, as well as social and political actors from across Europe interested in the future perspectives of the their peoples, gathered in Paris between 24th and 25th of June at a Conference aiming at the construction of a more Social, more Democratic, more Ecological, and more Peaceful Europe, and of another European Constitution.

Ecotopia is an international gathering of young people involved or interested in environmental and social justice issues. Ecotopia takes place every summer since 1989, each year in a different host country. It is organized by EYFA (European Youth For Action) together with local grassroots environmental organisations. This year, the 17th edition will take place in Moldova.

The first Preparatory Assembly of the Central and Eastern European Social Forum (CEESF) will be held in October 14-15-16 in Budapest. What follows is some information on the Initiative for Central and Eastern Europe and a draft program. Registration requests indicating name/organisation, availabilities, sphere of interest/ working group/seminary proposals can be sent to mbenyik (at) freemail.hu.

Despite some protests from right-wing extremist groups which tried to forbid the right to free expression and free association of LBGT people, the request for holding the first "gaypride" parade was legally approved and GayFest took place in Bucharest between 23 and 29 May. What follows is some background information about the organization of GayFest and reports from participants.

The first edition of the Romanian Social Forum was a meeting that attempted to impose the logic and mechanisms of representative democracy, encouraged by global capitalism, in the midst of civil society. The Forum excluded in practice any grassroots organizations and alienated itself in spirit from the notion of civil society.

ladyfest timisoara ( http://ladyfest-ro.pimienta.org), which took place during 20-22 may in 2005, was a nonprofit event that sought to create a space for women artists and feminist activism in romania. the organizers believe it made some crucial contributions in key places, where such an event was most needed. here is a review of the fest ...

The first "Romanian Social Forum" will take place on 5-7 May in Bucharest. The information is not openly available online ( http://www.forumul-social.ro), it was circulated without transparency, and I was invited through a closed private channel (!). Although I believe in the necessity of organizing a social forum and support the strong involvement of the labor unions and syndicates, I think the way it was conceived and organized thus far compromises the whole project from the start.

Alburnus Maior has come into the possession of a document that implies APD (1), GEC (2) and CENTRAS (3), three Bucharest-based NGOs, in the monitoring of public participation for permitting of the Rosia Montana mine development. The reason for drawing attention to this is that Alburnus Maior has clear indicators that this is a flawed monitoring project.

ACT! Against Racism is part of a European-wide Action week that takes place from 14 - 21 March 2005. Read on for a description of the history of the campaign, the European network coordinating it, and the actions which are being organised in Romania ...

This is an open letter addressed to the citizens as well as to the local and national organs of political power. We openly protest against the passivity shown by the local community and would like to sound an alarm about the impact of the proposed project by the corporation Iulius Group, which will irreversibly alter the dimension of our everyday lives and destroy the only green space left in the city of Iasi.

The Alba-Iulia Court of Appeal has suspended the discharge certificate for the so-called Carnic/Cirnic Massif. According to Romanian legislation, a discharge certificate puts a previously protected area back into the economic circuit. The decision to suspend the certificate was taken following a request calling for an urgent decision by the non-governmental organization ‘Alburnus Maior' (*).

The open source software movement has made some significant gains in recent years - some of the software packages it has produced have become virtual industry standards, in specific fields even gaining an edge over proprietary solutions produced by Microsoft and other major commercial operators. Well beyond the field of actual software development, open source ideology itself has also become increasingly recognised as a possible alternative to, or at least alteration of, standard corporate production models, and using open software has become a form of stating one's resistance to the corporatisation of key electronic services. Open source is now beginning to be translated to activities other than programming, with sometimes surprising results.

It is worrisome that even 14 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union the population in the Transdniester region cannot enjoy an elementary birthright, the right to freedom. We believe that to a great extent the cause for this injustice is the lack of a free mass-media which could help form a more objective public opinion. It is well known that all the Transdniestrian media is biased and subordinate to the separatist authorities.

> “Gypsies are not Romanians” – a very widespread idea in Romania.

The problem is not that the Roma don’t consider themselves Romanians, since the overwhelming majority of us do identify ourselves as Romanians. The problem is that you – that is the mass media and the greater part of the Romanian citizens who hallucinate that there exists such a thing as “pure ethnic” Romanians - consider us to be non-Romanian.

In 1994, for the first time ever, a genetically engineered (GE) plant was commercially grown. The introduction of the FlavrSavr tomato in the US was the beginning of a global change in agriculture - or so the biotech companies had planned. However, when the first harvest of GE soybeans and maize was about to be shipped to Europe in 1996, consumers there voiced an unforeseen opposition to this food. Consumers wanted to know what they were eating and asked for the labeling of GE food. In many countries of the European Union the introduction of genetically engineered food onto the market failed, and the major EU food producers and retailers now guarantee a GE-free food supply.