Miron Cozma (born August 25, 1943) 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.
In 2011, he entered in politics and founded Worker's Social Democratic Party.
Born in Derna, Bihor, Miron Cozma studied to become an electromechanical assistant engineer. [1] After graduation, he began working as a trainee at the Bărbăteni Mine, while living in Lupeni. He was also in charge with being the DJ of the town's disco. [1] In 1977, he became an informant of the Securitate, using the code name "Paul", sending memos about co-workers until 1983. [1]
In 1990, Cozma was working at the Lonea Coal Mine, being involved in the January 1990 Mineriad, when he was one of the 16 miners who were involved in talks with President Iliescu and the prime minister. [2] On 21–24 March 1990, the League of Miners Unions of the Jiu Valley elected Cozma as its leader. [3]
In 1991, Cozma's companies gained a monopoly in food retail in the mines of the Jiu Valley, which gave him substantial profits and influence. [4]
On 19 June 1991, Cozma ran over and killed a 31-year-old woman, Roza Violeta Drăghici, in the village of Paroșeni, Vulcan, Hunedoara, doing an irregular overtaking. [5] He was convicted of manslaughter and given a 2-years suspended sentence; the lenient sentence may have been caused by the close relationship of Cozma with the ruling National Salvation Front. [5]
In January 1999, Cozma led another series of miner protests, sparked by the Radu Vasile government's intention to close down several money-losing mines in the Jiu Valley region. Intending to put pressure on the government, Cozma and his miners started marching towards Bucharest. [6] The miners clashed with the Gendarmerie at Costeşti, Vâlcea County; about 70 miners and 100 gendarmes were wounded and one miner died. Soon after, Prime Minister Radu Vasile held talks with Cozma at the Cozia Monastery, and Cozma agreed to end the march and disband the miners. [7]
At the beginning of February of the same year, however, Cozma was sentenced by the Supreme Court of Justice to 18 years in prison for his involvement in the 1991 mineriad. This quickly prompted a new march of the miners towards Bucharest. This time, special forces intervened and dispersed the miners at Stoeneşti, Olt County. Cozma and his lieutenants were captured by the police; [8] Cozma himself was taken to the Rahova prison to serve his term.
He was pardoned by Romanian President Ion Iliescu on December 15, 2004, only a few days before the end of the latter's final term. However, Iliescu shortly afterwards revoked the pardon on December 16, stating that "it was a mistake". Yet Cozma was released in June 2005 when the cancellation of his pardon was ruled illegal by the Bucharest Court of Appeal. In September 2005, he was sentenced by the Romanian Supreme Court to a 10-year term for the January 1999 Mineriad. His sentences overlapped, so as of June 2006 he still had to serve a 13-month concurrent sentence in prison.
On June 2, 2006, Miron Cozma's request to be released on parole was denied by the Parole Commission of the Rahova Penitentiary. [9] A Bucharest court dismissed his appeal against the decision 2 weeks later. [10]
Cozma could have left the prison 6 months before time as recommended by the Parole Commission on January 3, 2007. [11] Although the decision was upheld by a Bucharest court on January 9, [12] it was overturned on appeal on February 20, 2007. [13]
Miron Cozma was finally released on 2 December 2007, with a restriction on entering Petroşani or Bucharest. Upon leaving Rahova, he flew to Timişoara to meet with his family and friends. He stated in his interviews that certain politicians should have been incarcerated as well, adding "Spiritul lui Miron Cozma nu moare!" ("The soul of Miron Cozma will never die!").
In June 2013, Miron Cozma claimed during an interview [14] that the Army used live rounds against miners.
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.
The Romanian Intelligence Service is Romania's main domestic intelligence service. Its role is to gather information relevant to national security and hand it over to relevant institutions, such as Romanian Government, presidency and law enforcement departments and agencies. The service is gathering intelligence by ways such as signals intelligence (SIGINT), open-source intelligence (OSINT) and human intelligence (HUMINT).
Emil Constantinescu is a Romanian professor and politician, who served as the President of Romania, from 1996 to 2000.
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 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.
Marian Munteanu is a former leader of the anti-government protests that took place in 1990 in Romania against the National Salvation Front (FSN). The anti-government protests were ended violently by the intervention of the miners from Jiu Valley. During the early 1990s, he was also the leader of the far-right political organization "Mișcarea pentru România".
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 is 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.
The Jiu Valley miners' strike of 1977 was the largest protest movement against the Communist regime in Romania before its final days. It took place 1–3 August 1977 and was centered in the coal mining town of Lupeni, in Transylvania's Jiu Valley.
Cozmin Horea Gușă is a Romanian physicist, journalist and politician. A member of the National Initiative Party (PIN), he was a member of the Romanian Chamber of Deputies for Bucharest from 2004 to 2008.
Victor Babiuc was a Romanian jurist and politician. A former member of the Democratic Party (PD), and of the National Liberal Party (PNL), he was a member of the Romanian Chamber of Deputies for Bucharest in 1990 and from 1992 to 1996, and for Brașov County from 1996 to 2004. In the Petre Roman cabinet, he was Minister of Justice from 1990 to 1991. In the Theodor Stolojan cabinet, he was Minister of the Interior from 1991 to 1992. In the Victor Ciorbea, Radu Vasile and Mugur Isărescu cabinets, he was Minister of National Defense from 1996 to 2000.
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.
This is a list of 1990 events that occurred in Romania.
This is a list of 1999 events that occurred in Romania.
The January 1999 Mineriad was led by miners in Romania against low wages under the leadership of Miron Cozma in January 1999. 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.
The February 1990 Mineriad was a mineriad that occurred in Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Although it was at first non-violent, the protests later escalated. This Mineriad happened 18–19 February, less than a month after the January 1990 Mineriad. Despite the demonstrators' pleas to non-violence, several persons started throwing stones into the Victoria Palace Government building. Riot police and army forces intervened to restore order, and on the same night, 4,000 miners headed to Bucharest. Opposition leaders and independent media speculated that the demonstration was manipulated by the Securitate and the National Salvation Front. Miners maintained their relative innocence of the violence, claiming that the agitation and most of the brutality was the work of Ion Iliescu's government agents who had infiltrated and disguised themselves as miners.
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.
Events from the year 1954 in Romania. The year was marked by the 1954 Romanian blizzard.
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