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30 Years Ago, Romania Deprived Thousands of Babies of Human Contact
- ThePowerOfFuet 6y agoThank you for posting this. It's a long read, and depressing in parts, but I found it really interesting.
- 19f191ty 6y ago.
- Springtime 6y agoKind of off-topic but it strikes me how 'tl;dr' has replaced usage of 'summary' in more contexts than I would have expected. Here perhaps feels a bit out of keeping given the subject matter.
- stefantalpalaru 6y agoWhat they won't tell you is how many healthy children were bought for a few grand each by Americans and Canadians who flooded Romania after the '89 revolution. They were all outside those terrible orphanages. This foreign adoption lobby was so powerful that the US government pressured Romanian authorities to keep allowing the black market of no-red-tape foreign adoptions after the 2001 ban: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/05BUCHAREST1173_a.html https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/05BUCHAREST1173_a.html Those few voices outside the choir were silenced: http://www.roeliepost.com/ http://www.roeliepost.com/ Fun fact: Romania's current president and his wife made a fortune as middlemen for foreigners buying children from poor families - https://evz.ro/purtatorul-de-cuvant-al-pnl-alina-gorghiu-confirma-implicarea-lui-klaus-iohannis-in-adoptiile-de-copii-de-dupa-1989.html https://evz.ro/purtatorul-de-cuvant-al-pnl-alina-gorghiu-con...
- bad_user 6y agoArguably international adoptions are a good thing, given the proper checks in place to ensure those children aren't adopted into slavery. There are currently tens of thousands of abandoned children in Romania that nobody wants to adopt. And many of Romania's orphanages are still terrible. And your last sentence isn't a "fact", but an unsupported allegation. For it to be a fact you'd need actual proof, instead of links from shitty journals. I'm a Romanian living in Romania btw.
- chimen 6y agoCan you give me proof that Iliescu called the miners into Bucharest twice after the fall of Ceausescu and beat the shit out of people for the sole reason that they were walking on the streets? What is the proof that you require when we're talking about the current president? What constitutes proof? A conviction in court?...then, Iliescu is innocent even though the common knowledge in this country IS (notice the caps) that he and a few others were responsible for those atrocities in the early 90s. A mere Google search reveals more than 20 newspapers supporting the claim that he was somewhat involved in shady business with children - heck there are even filmed investigations with multiple people/families claiming on camera that he glued the offer with the demand.
- bad_user 6y ago> Can you give me proof that Iliescu called the miners into Bucharest twice after the fall of Ceausescu and beat the shit out of people for the sole reason that they were walking on the streets? Yes, because he did that on national television, congratulating the miners afterwards for their civic spirit. Really poor analogy btw.
- chimen 6y ago> Really poor analogy btw I'm not surprised. How about the house he just lost in Brasov's court which concluded it was acquired with fake documents? I know: "Shitty court"
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago>"The state can take better care of your child than you can" The products of autocratic governments are depressingly predictable. Ostensibly, atrocities like this are done for the people - and yet, they are completely devoid of humanity.
- brnt 6y agoAre they wrong? I'm not entirely facetious.
- redis_mlc 6y agoIf you're interested in an answer, read the rather long article. Sometimes it's good to leave the comfortable bubble most of us live in. It says that in the case of Romania, warehousing children was a disaster on the scale of Dachau in WW2. Psychology textbooks had to be rewritten afterwards as this level of child neglect was never contemplated - no biological or custodial parents to pattern their behavior. One observation I'll make is that although adoption is considered a noble act in the US, many other countries consider it be throwing your baby away to be exploited. People that I've talked to in the Philippines and Indonesia visibly recoiled when I mentioned the word "adoption", so there must be an unfortunate history there.
- Err_Eek 6y ago> One observation I'll make is that although adoption is considered a noble act in the US, many other countries consider it be throwing your baby away to be exploited. Adoption is considered a noble act in Romania
- Zhenya 6y agoAtlantic says he was born ill, his site that they link to says he was born healthy and became ill at 6 months. What's going on with the fact checkers @ the Atlantic?
- h2odragon 6y agoThey're all tired and shagged out from a long squawk about chloroquine.
- bad_user 6y agoThis is a direct result of Ceaușescu banning abortions in comunist România in his infamous decree 770 from 1966, in an effort to grow the population. This was a huge social experiment the pro-life vs pro-choice debaters can learn from. If you want to see a documentary on the subject this is a good one: https://youtu.be/ZgZJ-IV8Et0 https://youtu.be/ZgZJ-IV8Et0
- drno123 6y agoIn the article it states that Izidor was not an unwanted child, but got ill when very young, got hospitalised and the family just left him in the hospital and stopped visiting.
- bad_user 6y ago> it states that Izidor was not an unwanted child Where does it say that? I might have missed it. Abandoning a child for having a leg deformity doesn't strike me as if he was wanted much. Anyway, the poor conditions in the orphanages and children hospitals were a result of overcrowding and this happened due to Ceaușescu's policies that turned Romania into a baby factory. And there was also the issue that children with disabilities were incompatible with communism's "new man" ideal, so the orphanages for children with disabilities were genuine horrors.
- teruakohatu 6y agoThat is what the birth parents told him, it's near the end of the article. Hard to know if they were telling the truth, but he was not abandoned at birth.
- magicalhippo 6y agoMaybe not the case here, but I heard of a similar story from another country. As a baby he got his arm badly burned and the parents left him at the hospital because they couldn't pay for treatment. The accident cost him his hand _and_ his parents.
- dmos62 6y ago
- closeparen 6y agoThis was a beautiful read, thank you. A question always pops into my mind, reading about the effects of this kind of deprivation on children. At what age do love and affection transition from an inherent need to a frivolous want? From something it’s unconscionable for a person to lack, to something where Hollywood is castigated for conditioning people to expect it? Where is the developmental cut line?
- andylynch 6y agoI don’t think there is any such age, these are something we all fundamentally need to thrive.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago> Hollywood is castigated for conditioning people to expect it? Hollywood is (rightfully) castigated for setting unrealistic beauty standards and expectations for young men and women, and for misrepresenting how healthy romance and relationships work. Love is out there for everyone (...I hope), but a good chunk of our media influences suggest and imply that men should have an expectation that women will automatically find them as an attractive partner or reinforce that they’re somehow “entitled” to a sexual experience - these broken expectations form the basis of many (but not all) of the misogynistic anger that fuels the Incel movement.
- brabel 6y ago> but a good chunk of our media influences suggest and imply that men should have an expectation that women will automatically find them as an attractive partner or reinforce that they’re somehow “entitled” to a sexual experience... Why do you focus on men? It seems to me that all humans expect to be "entitled" to sexual experiences.
- quintushoratius 6y agoNo one is entitled to use another person's body for sex, or anything else, and it is improper to expect it. If you need sex, most people have at least one working hand that can take care of that urge for you. Humans are social animals, however, and have such a strong desire for love and friendship that lack of it, at any age, leads to dysfunction.
- imchillyb 6y agoThe choice part comes when inserting TAB-A into SLOT-B. Everything else is consequence. People in favor of abortive medical alleviation of their TAB-A into SLOT-B problem, are really stating that they want no personal responsibility for their actions. Not an argument for or against abortion, it's an argument over personal responsibility. If you don't want kids, don't screw. It really is that simple. If you screw, you're gonna have kids...
- thdrdt 6y agoIn my opinion the article is way to nostalgic. I have seen the images of the child houses. It was complete horror and super inhumane. I can handle a lot of bad stuff but those images have been haunting me for a long time. Very very sad and I am happy a lot has changed since then.
- grandchild 6y agoIt seemed pretty horrible and not at all nostalgic to me from the article. > nearly inedible, watered-down food > Hepatitis B and HIV/AIDS ravaged the Romanian orphanages > naked children on benches > overcrowded rooms where [...] orphans endlessly rocked, or punched themselves in the face, or shrieked And at one point I think the article does draw a comparison with the liberation of nazi concentration camps? Not sure were you get the nostalgia from.
- trumbler 6y agoNot surprised. To this day respect for human life in Romania is low - human trafficking and rampant racism are part an parcel of life in that country. In Cluj Napoca for instance, a notoriously corrupt city, people of gipsy background are not even allowed in public administration buildings and their children are frequently sold as modern day slaves. Withe the blessing of local police forces of course. Yet Romanians couldnt care less.
- dash2 6y agoGot evidence? I've been to Cluj and it seemed remarkably uncorrupt and well run, certainly compared to the rest of Romania.
- trumbler 6y agoI could give evidence in court if i had the opportunity. Everyone knows it, but in Romania people prefer not to talk about it - apparently thats unpatriotic. Almost every building project in that city is a result of bribery to allow sub par quality. Down town restaurant regularly pay bribe to health and safety inspectors. Public hospital doctors take bribe or they will let you die. And so on. Office workers may be ignorant of these facts but pretty much any honest business owner will tell you this. The city looks good, compared to the rest of Romania. Want to buy a property, Just declare a low value and pay the rest under the table. There are people who meant to recover communist confiscated land - the mayor’s friends have made sure that judges push trials so far in the future that the right to do so expires, and the list goes on. But hey gotta make it look good for foreign investors so they can bring over outsourcing jobs.
- wastedhours 6y agoI mean, the bribery is common, but wouldn't have expected Cluj to be much worse than any other city (and seems to actually be better than many others). I've also seen plenty of people talking about the corruption, although less about the local companies and more about the ravaging of the forests by Austrian and German logging companies (but not really from a patriotic angle).
- seunosewa 6y agoI don’t understand why the lady who took him home refused to take him back after he mistakenly said he wanted to return to work with her. Was she so annoyed with the little child because she thought he rejected her that she would refuse to help him any further?
- ajb 6y agoAt that point they were at the gate, it's not clear from the article, but I assumed that the orphanage authorities wouldn't permit that, rather than Onisa.
- Digit-Al 6y agoI think you're misunderstanding. When they were at her home she asked if he wanted to stay at her home or come to work with her. It was at the gate that he realised his mistake. As to why she just didn't refuse to take him... Well, I guess that could be called kidnapping. Obviously I don't know for sure but I would presume she was giving him the option of staying with her or going back, but didn't realise he wouldn't understand that "going to work" with her would mean going back. We'll never know for sure I guess.
- ausbah 6y agothis is absolutely tragic through and through. thousands of children grow up for in neglected, disgustingly unhygienic homes only more many of them to never fully "recover" (in whatever sense of the word one chooses)
- smnscu 6y agoWife gave birth to our first son ~8 years ago in Romania at a public hospital in Bucharest. Not only the experience was harrowing for her (too much shit to go through and most of it sounds like a bad joke), but yes, this still happens today - they take the baby away from the mom immediately and you only get to see it between specific times during the day.
- fierarul 6y agoWhile the drama that happened there can't be denied, it is tiresome to see Romania in 2020 still presented in this light. I've been browsing hn.algolia.com for articles posted in the past year about various countries and I think Romania wins hands down on bad image. Is Romania the bogeyman of civilisation? Well, supposedly Dracula comes from here too! Just a side comment.
- bad_user 6y agoI'm a Romanian and I actually love my country, but this article is more about communist Romania or at most the Romania of the 90s and we shouldn't be in denial about past or even current problems.
- decretel 6y agoesti prost
- fenesiistvan 6y agoSadly i don't have enough points to downvote your comnent
- wastedhours 6y agoI guess it's because a lot of the shit that's happened is reasonably modern by other country's standards (at least in countries that have taken as many forward leaps as Romania has). You have such change in 30 years, but also even more change held back by politics and still vast wage disparity. It's in an odd limbo where some elements are well in front of many countries (like connectivity, almost unparralled) whereas others, like poor infrastructure (like that stunt of the businessman building more highway the government) and a perception of the politics still being ruled by pandering to pensioners. Were it not for Brexit and my almost certain inability to get RO citizenship any time soon, we'd probably have moved out for a few years as things will still come on leaps and bounds.
- fenesiistvan 6y agoCurrently our image is mostly determined by the gypsies spread all around the EU. One year ago when I was in Spain, people looked me very differently, depending if I introduced myself as a romanian or a hungarian (I am a hungarian living in romania)
- octodog 6y agoThis is a brilliant but absolutely heartbreaking article. It is so sad to think of all the children who have had their lives changed by such cruellness.
- vstuart 6y agoRelated: no mention in that article of notorious (Vancouver B.C.) Kayla Bourque, who once studied criminal law purportedly to better accomplish the future murder of a homeless person, plus other sociopathic behaviors ... https://www.google.com/search?q=kayla+bourque+romanian+orphan https://www.google.com/search?q=kayla+bourque+romanian+orpha...
- factcheck21 6y agoHere are some harrowing facts about Romania: Romania "contributes to 21% of registered victims, 21% of suspects of conducting trafficking and 44% of prosecutions at the EU level.". https://www.euractiv.com/section/all/opinion/human-trafficking-in-romania-an-integrated-approach-needed-in-the-era-of-open-borders/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/all/opinion/human-trafficki... "Romania is plagued by a seedy evil: sex trafficking. It’s Europe’s undisputed sex worker production factory and it might be interesting to understand why. " https://www.insideover.com/society/how-romania-became-europes-sex-trafficking-factory.html https://www.insideover.com/society/how-romania-became-europe... "Cluj-Napoca, Romania’s fourth largest city, has the dubious distinction of housing Europe’s largest waste-related ghetto." https://meta.eeb.org/2019/08/29/treated-like-trash-how-roma-in-romania-are-forced-to-live-by-city-dumps/ https://meta.eeb.org/2019/08/29/treated-like-trash-how-roma-... "A newspaper investigation found that disinfectant used in Romanian operating rooms was ten times weaker than it should have been, and the people are angry. " https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/dp5a3m/romania-hospitals-infection-health-minister-resignation-876 https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/dp5a3m/romania-hospitals-... And the list goes on. It will be 2200 and Romanians will still blame it on communism. Even here you can see many are trying to bury rampant corruption and discrimination. It is so common in that country that the society will instead try and hide facts only to sugar coat things.