The wall is a symbol. In Romania, it separates Romanian Roma who are dark-skinned from Romanian Roma who are (slightly) whiter. Read this while listening to Pink Floyd’s full album (live) or just another brick.

As far as dictatorial endeavours go, Romanians are mostly familiar with the “People’s Palace” aka “Hunger Palace” built by Ceausescu. However, the crowning achievement of Stalinist Romania is the Danube-Black Sea Channel (arguably, a long pit, the opposite of a wall). Perhaps to celebrate freedom (and simultaneously declare their racial superiority in the face of all the humiliations they have to endure when travelling), quite a few local authorities in Romania have been busily building walls to separate and “contain” the Gypsy/Roma minority.

In the video linked under the photo above (itself from pg-zidul, below), Mayor Chereches of Baia Mare explains that the wall built to “protect” the Roma population from the highway was painted by art students, thus becoming “impossible to demolish”. For better or for worse, that’s also what some of the victims think. The wall has some history, causing the Mayor to be fined some 3 years ago and the local Baptist church to pontificate (see also Observator).

The art students were from Cluj, and later on their University issued a press release more or less accusing the Baia Mare City Hall of manipulating their innocence (adv-manipula). Let us not forget that Salome, the Swiss girl who came to live with Gypsies on a garbage dump, found her “Nirvana” right next to Cluj.

Yet this is by far neither the most controversial wall ever built in Romania, nor the only one. Take, for instance, Tarlungeni, where Iosif Kiss, the Mayor, built a similar wall around 5-6 years ago, this one lengthening the Roma kids trip to school. The same mayor appears to be at fault for destroying people’s houses in Zizin through large machines carrying river stones.

Yet such situations are not limited to Transylvania. In Iasi, “social building M2” has been disconnected from utilities for the past 7 years and the City Hall intends to demolish it, in spite of all the people still living there.

Do I need to mention, in this context, Mazare, the Mayor of Constanta, who has been dressing like Hitler, had his haircut and moustache, gave them up and is now investigated for corruption?

Compared to these idiots, Ontanu’s gesture of extinguishing a cigarette butt in the palm of a Roma worker is a tender gesture of love. (For more on Romanian attitudes toward Roma people see conjectura l3st.)

LE: It occurred to me that the capital city mayors (each 'sector' has one) seem to also have a fetish for walls. BucharestLife shows us a mystery wall in Unirii (Union Square), and there was also a recent citizens' protest against walls that were erected on green spaces.

Sources / More info: hn-bm, pg-zidul, adv-manipula, spt-frig, emm-chereches, hn-50s3