| January 1999 Mineriad | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the mineriads | |||
| Date | 4–23 January 1999 | ||
| Parties | |||
| Lead figures | |||
The January 1999 Mineriad was led by miners in Romania against low wages under the leadership of Miron Cozma in January 1999. [1] [2] Protesters marched onto Bucharest and other cities, demonstrating the government's wage policies and low wages, demanding an increase of the wages and better working conditions in the country. [3] [4]
The Jiu Valley miners left again for Bucharest, unhappy with the government's reduction of subsidies, which would result in the closing of the mines.Together with the miners who left for Bucharest, there were also members of PUNR, PRM, PDSR and PS. [5] The mineriad was openly supported by the Greater Romania Party (PRM) and by the president of this party, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, who invited the miners to occupy the Romanian Parliament and to dismiss the government. [6] Miron Cozma, the leader of the miners, was also vice-president of the PRM, being in constant contact with the PRM leadership in Bucharest, which was preparing the arrival of miners in the Romanian capital. [7] According to the Romanian Intelligence Service, PRM contacted the Chinese Communist Party before the strike and the Chinese communists promised financial help to Corneliu Vadim Tudor if he takes over the government of Romania. [8] Ion Iliescu and the Social Democracy Party of Romania (PDSR) endorsed the mineriad (PDSR first-vicepresident Adrian Năstase compared Miron Cozma with a hajduk during a speech), [9] but they were not directly involved in it, unlike the PRM. [10]
The miners crossed the barricade installed by the gendarmes at Costești. Near Râmnicu Vâlcea, a Gendarmerie unit was ambushed by the miners. After reaching Râmnicu Vâlcea, they sequestered the prefect of Vâlcea County. Radu Vasile, prime minister at the time, negotiated an agreement with Miron Cozma, the miners' leader, at the nearby Cozia Monastery. [11]
On 14 February 1999, Cozma was found guilty of organizing the mineriad, and he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. According to the indictment, the mineriad also received support from Russia. [12] The miners led by Cozma left for Bucharest to attempt another mineriad, but this time, they were stopped by the police at Stoenești, Olt County. In the clash that followed, 100 policemen and 70 miners were wounded, and one miner died. Cozma was arrested and sent to a prison in Rahova. [13] [14]
The January 1999 Mineriad was described in the Romanian press as a coup d'etat attempt. [15] [16] [17]
Ion Iliescu is a Romanian politician and engineer who served as President of Romania from 1989 until 1996 and from 2000 until 2004. Between 1996 and 2000 and also from 2004 to 2008, the year in which he retired, Iliescu was a senator for the Social Democratic Party (PSD), of which he is the founder and honorary president to this day.
After the Communist rulership ended and the former Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was executed in the midst of the bloody Romanian Revolution of December 1989, the National Salvation Front (FSN) seized power, led by Ion Iliescu. The FSN transformed itself into a massive political party in short time and overwhelmingly won the general election of May 1990, with Iliescu as president. These first months of 1990 were marked by violent protests and counter-protests, involving most notably the tremendously violent and brutal coal miners of the Jiu Valley which were called by Iliescu himself and the FSN to crush peaceful protesters in the University Square in Bucharest.
Adrian Năstase is a Romanian jurist, academic/professor, blogger, and former politician who served as the prime minister of Romania from December 2000 to December 2004.
Petre Roman is a Romanian engineer and politician who was Prime Minister of Romania from 1989 to 1991, when his government was overthrown by the intervention of the miners led by Miron Cozma in the September 1991 Mineriad. Although regarded as the first Romanian prime minister since 1945 who was not a communist or communist sympathiser, he was a socialist. He later self-identified as a liberal. He was also the president of the Senate from 1996 to 1999 and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1999 to 2000.
The mineriads were a series of protests and often violent altercations by Jiu Valley miners in Bucharest during the 1990s, particularly 1990–91. The term "mineriad" is also used to refer to the most significant and violent of these encounters, which occurred June 13–15, 1990. During the 1990s, the Jiu Valley miners played a visible role in Romanian politics, and their protests reflected inter-political and societal struggles after the Romanian Revolution.
The Jiu Valley is a region in southwestern Transylvania, Romania, in Hunedoara county, situated in a valley of the Jiu River between the Retezat Mountains and the Parâng Mountains. The region was heavily industrialised and the main activity was coal mining, but due to low efficiency, most of the mines were closed down in the years following the collapse of Communism in Romania. For a long time the place was called Romania's biggest coalfield.
Miron Cozma is a former Romanian labor-union organizer and politician, and leader of Romania's Jiu Valley coal miners' union. He is best known for his leading the miners of the Jiu Valley during the September 1991 Mineriad which overthrew the reformist Petre Roman government. Cozma was a controversial character in the 1990s, both within and outside of Jiu Valley.
The Conservative Party was a conservative political party in Romania. It was founded in 1991, approximately two years after the fall of Communism in Romania, originally under the name Romanian Humanist Party. From 2005 until 3 December 2006, the party was a junior member of the Government of Romania. The party adopted the name Conservative Party on 7 May 2005. Subsequently, a little bit more than a decade after, more specifically in June 2015, it merged with the Liberal Reformist Party (PLR) to form the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE).
The June 1990 Mineriad was the suppression of anti-National Salvation Front (FSN) rioting in Bucharest, Romania by the physical intervention of groups of industrial workers as well as coal miners from the Jiu Valley, brought to Bucharest by the government to counter the rising violence of the protesters. This event occurred several weeks after the FSN achieved a landslide victory in the May 1990 general election, the first elections after the fall of the communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu. Many of the miners, factory workers, and other anti-protester groups, fought with the protesters and bystanders. The violence resulted in some deaths and many injuries on both sides of the confrontations. Official figures listed seven fatalities and hundreds of injured, although media estimates of the number killed and injured varied widely and were often much higher.
Doru-Viorel Ursu was a Romanian politician and lawyer. A member of the National Salvation Front (FSN), he was Minister of the Interior in the Petre Roman cabinets, carrying his mandate between the Mineriads of 1990 and 1991.
Bujoreni is a commune located in Vâlcea County, Oltenia, Romania, just to the north of Râmnicu Vâlcea, the seat of Vâlcea County. It is composed of seven villages: Bogdănești, Bujoreni, Gura Văii, Lunca, Malu Alb, Malu Vârtop and Olteni.
Stoenești is a commune in Olt County, Oltenia, Romania. It is composed of a single village, Stoenești.
The Red Quadrilateral was a term used by the Romanian 1990s media to describe the nationalist political alliance that supported the Romanian government between the 1992 and 1996 legislative elections. The 'Quadrilateral', informal at first, consisted of the Democratic National Salvation Front, the nationalist Romanian National Unity Party (PUNR) of Gheorghe Funar and the Greater Romania Party of Corneliu Vadim Tudor, and the neo-communist Socialist Party of Labour of Ceaușescu era Prime Minister Ilie Verdeț. As Parliament support for the FDSN government was dwindling, the alliance was made official in January 1995. Only the PDSR and the PUNR were awarded government portfolios, the other two only receiving lower-level positions in the government. Sometimes Democratic Agrarian Party of Romania (PDAR) is included than its called Red Pentagon. However, the PDAR went into the opposition in 1994.
Marian Vătavu is a Romanian former professional footballer who played as a centre back for teams such as Dinamo București, FCM Câmpina, Unirea Urziceni, CS Otopeni or Chindia Târgovişte, among others.
September 1991 Mineriad was a political action and physical confrontation between the miners of the Jiu Valley and the Romanian authorities, that led to the resignation of Prime Minister Petre Roman's government. Led by Miron Cozma, president of the Jiu Valley Coal Miners Union, the miners engaged in a series of actions beginning in the 1990s referred to as "mineriads" whereby large numbers of miners traveled to the Romanian capital of Bucharest and engaged in demonstrations and sometimes violent confrontations against counter-demonstrators and government authorities.
The Romanian Hearth Union or Romanian Hearth Federation is a far-right nationalist movement and civic organization, founded in Târgu Mureș in 1990.
This is a list of 1999 events that occurred in Romania.
Cristian Victor Popescu Piedone is a Romanian businessman and politician who served as mayor of Bucharest's Sector 4 from 2008 until 4 November 2015, when he resigned following the Colectiv nightclub fire and the subsequent 2015 Romanian protests. He is currently serving as the mayor of Sector 5 since 2020.
The February 1999 Mineriad was the last of the six mineriads that occurred in Romania. It began on 16 February 1999, when 2,000–2,500 miners from the Jiu Valley left for Bucharest in around 50 buses as a protest against the 18-year long jail sentence given in absentia to Miron Cozma, the "leader" of the miners, for his actions in the September 1991 Mineriad against the Romanian Government.
Gelu Voican-Voiculescu is a Romanian politician and former dissident who served as deputy prime minister in the provisional government of Romania (1989–1990). He was also a senator of Buzău in the 1990-1992 legislature, elected on the lists of the National Salvation Front, as well as ambassador to Tunisia and Morocco.
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