Bucharest, Romania -- If you shake hands with Sorin Dragan, do so gently. His ligaments have been badly damaged. He also has two large wounds on the top of his head and one on his forehead. His knees are so bruised that he walks with great difficulty.
Mr. Dragan, a student of foreign languages at Bucharest University, is editor of Voice, a publication of the League of Free Romanian Students. The league led anti-government protests here for five weeks in April and May.
Then, on June 14, a group of miners broke into the university’s central building and attacked Mr. Dragan and 19 other students with iron rods and other mining tools. The incident was widely believed to be part of a government-inspired crackdown.
Although students’ fears of widespread arrests have since been largely laid to rest, more than 20,000 people -- most of them students -- demonstrated peacefully here this month to demand the release of a student leader, Marian Munteanu, who was arrested after last month’s incident.
The Romanian government, meanwhile, has been struggling to improve its international image in the wake of national elections won by President Ion Iliescu’s National Salvation Front, which took over after the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu last December.
In the June assault at Bucharest University, miners “broke down the gates of the building and destroyed everything in their way -- the labs, and all the collections of the geology and biology faculties,” Mr. Dragan says.
“Then they reached our room.”
The students were in the building to protect it from rioters who had been rampaging through central Bucharest since the previous day, when the police had removed scores of hunger strikers and other demonstrators from University Square.
Eyewitnesses say the miners broke into the university building at about 5:15 am on June 14. Within two or three minutes they found their way through a maze of stairs and corridors to the room where the students, including Mr. Dragan and Mr. Munteanu, the student league’s president, were sleeping.
“Someone must have led them there,” says Mr. Dragan. “One cannot find the way so easily. We were awakened by our colleagues, who warned us that the miners were coming. We only had time to lock the door, but it was useless.”
As the miners broke into the room, Mr. Munteanu told all the students to kneel and remain silent. But the students’ attempt to be passive did not help, and the miners began beating them severely.
Mr. Munteanu was later reported by Romanian television to have been arrested and taken to a police hospital. The student had been an organizer of the April-May demonstrations, which ended after the National Salvation Front won the elections on May 20.
The authorities charged Mr. Munteanu with instigating violence and instability. Mr. Iliescu accused him of associating with fascists.
Mr. Munteanu had been arrested previously -- on June 13, a day before the miners’ assault -- but soon released. Early that day, four people reportedly were killed and dozens injured in violence that began when policemen armed with truncheons tried to force a small group of demonstrators to leave University Square. More than 200 people were arrested.
After a series of clashes with the police throughout the day, demonstrators succeeded in taking control of the square at about 4 pm. Mr. Munteanu, who had just been freed by the police, went to address the crowd.
There are conflicting accounts of what he said. The government says he told the crowd to go to police headquarters. Others say he rejected a call for such action and urged the demonstrators to remain in the square.
Either way, the stage for further violence apparently had been set. All those arrested earlier in the day had been released in an attempt by the police to calm things down, but by then the situation was volatile. Angry demonstrators overturned buses, vandalized the country’s only television station, and set fire to buildings of the Interior Ministry and the police.
Later that night, with army units refusing to move in, Mr. Iliescu called in more than 10,000 miners from Romania’s Jiu Valley to restore order.
Foreign observers say the miners’ actions were overseen by police loyal to the National Salvation Front, although the front denies the charge. But many sources who saw the miners’ attack on the university say people in civilian clothes were directing it.
For its part, the National Salvation Front says the rioting of June 13 was a cleverly disguised coup attempt. The demonstrators were “very well organized and knew exactly where to go,” says Sorin Mester, president of the front’s first voting district.
The League of Free Romanian Students has compiled a list of valuable objects in its possession that it says were destroyed in attacks by miners on two Bucharest University buildings. Among the items were 32 typewriters, 2 fax machines, a computer, 2 video cameras, 2 photocopiers, and 2 telex machines -- all difficult, if not impossible, for the students to replace.
The league says the miners also stole money and textbooks from its office in the university’s law-school building.
In addition, miners ransacked the university’s Architecture Institute, across the street from the university’s main building. At the institute, they destroyed a photography exhibit, broke dozens of windows, and damaged many classrooms, along with offices of Radio Contact, an independent Belgian radio station.
The station’s director, Radu Soancs, says he was at the Architecture Institute while it was being ransacked by some 200 miners. He says he saw 13 students dragged down several flights of stairs and brutally beaten by miners armed with large wooden clubs and iron rods.
Nearly every door in the institute’s five-story building was kicked in, and the contents of the rooms were destroyed -- as was the radio station’s transmitter, which the miners managed to find in a broom closet.
The station’s broadcast studio was untouched, however, apparently because it was protected by a prison-style security door.
Two weeks later, to the surprise of opponents and supporters of the National Salvation Front, Prime Minister Petre Roman announced the formation of a new Cabinet composed mostly of intellectuals in their late 40’s. He also issued plans for radical economic changes, including decentralization and rapid privatization of state-owned enterprises.
The government also has offered financial aid to Romania’s universities and opposition political parties, in part to compensate them for damage that the miners caused to their property in June.
Meanwhile, Mr. Mester of the National Salvation Front says the possibility of more confrontations cannot be ruled out.
“It will be a very hard period,” he says. “But after 25 years of darkness, it is difficult to come into the light without a transition.”