Interim PM Bolojan marks 36 years since Mineriada: 'Violence can never be a tool of power'
Interim Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan issued a statement on the 36th anniversary of the June 1990 Mineriada, calling the violent crackdown on protesters a 'painful moment' and saying that truth and justice remain owed to its victims.
Bolojan's official statement
Romania's interim prime minister Ilie Bolojan released a message on Facebook marking 36 years since the Mineriada of 13–15 June 1990. He described the events as one of the most painful moments of the country's early democratic period, when citizens exercising their right to protest were beaten, humiliated, illegally arrested and silenced by force.
In a democratic Romania, violence and repression can never be tools of power.
Bolojan stressed that democracy means more than elections, requiring respect for free expression, fundamental rights and the dignity of every citizen. He concluded by stating that the nation bows before the victims of the Mineriada.
The Mineriada of 1990
The Mineriada unfolded over 13–15 June 1990, when thousands of miners were brought to Bucharest to suppress an anti-government protest in University Square. The confrontation left four people dead, 1,300 injured and another 1,200 illegally detained, according to the accounts cited by Romanian media.
- Miners are called to Bucharest; four-day crackdown on University Square protesters begins (13–15 June).
- Four people killed, 1,300 injured and 1,200 illegally detained during the repression.
- Supreme court returns Mineriada case to the Prosecutor General's Office, partially granting defendants' exceptions.
- Interim PM Bolojan and the Romanian president issue statements marking the 36th anniversary.
Legal case returned to prosecutors
The criminal case over the Mineriada, in which former president Ion Iliescu stood trial for the violent repression of demonstrators, was sent back to the Prosecutor General's Office in March 2026. The supreme court partially admitted the requests and exceptions raised by the defendants. Alongside Iliescu, former prime minister Petre Roman, former deputy prime minister Gelu Voican-Voiculescu, former SRI director Virgil Măgureanu and Adrian Sârbu (then an adviser to Roman) were referred to justice for crimes against humanity.
Presidential call for a verdict
A second article reported that the president of Romania also issued a statement on the anniversary, pointing out that the absence of a clear judicial verdict, more than three and a half decades later, remains an impermissible stain and an unresolved obligation. The president noted that the moral health and solidarity of the nation rest in part on delivering that act of justice.
