Bucharest, July 22, 2015
Graves at a Jewish cemetery in Romania
With his signature Romanian president Klaus Iohannis has enacted a law addressing a number of issues concerning the history of human rights in Romania, as reported by the Associated Press.
Approved by the Romanian parliament last month, President Iohannis signed Wednesday amendments to existing legislation that punish Holocaust denial and the promotion of the Legionnaires’ Movement, as well as ban fascist, racist or xenophobic organizations and symbols, and the promotion of people guilty of crimes against humanity.
The new legislation allows for prison sentences of up to three years.
Holocaust denial refers to the regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu in which about 280,000 Jews and 11,000 Gypsies were killed between 1940 and 1944.
While the government has branded Corneliu Zelea Codreanu’s 1930’s Legionnares’ Movement “fascist,” this law could prove controversial as many faithful Romanian Orthodox Christians remember the movement, which included the likes of the later Archimandrite Arsenie Papacioc, as a firm defender of Orthodoxy in a time of unrest.
