THE ROMANIANS IN BEIRUT

This is the first of the stories I shot in Beirut in November last year, a day before president Emile Lahoud steped down from office. Lost of tension, of course.
My Romanians felt the tension and they were afraid the concert they had that week would have been cancelled due to the political crisis. Thre are about 50 Romanians in the Beirut Philarmonic Orchestra. They play every morning in St. Joseph Church in Monot street and I found them with a little help from the Cultural secretary of the Romanian Embassy in Beirut. I've been trying to call them forthe last few days, since the Hezbollah (yeah, again Hezbollah) has taken control of the western Beirut where all the nice places are. For some reason nobody is interested in this story in Romania. I can't understand why, given the fact that most of the world is carefully watching what's happening in Lebanon.

Oh, please, don't be harsh on the video. It was the first time I had to shoot my own footage and do the interviews at the same time. And it's the first video I edit alone, at home, on my laptop using Movie Maker. So, yeah, you professionals out there, be patient with me. It takes time to learn this stuff, ok? And it takes time to do the subtitles. So here's what they say.

The guy in the orange coat has been in Beirut since febriary last year and he's pretty happy there. There has been a bit of turmoil, but not as much as he expected.

The girl witht he glasses, the violonist, explains how she had to cancel her classes becasue of the SITUATION ad how scared she was to cross downtown Beirut on her way to Brumana, on the mountain, where she lives. She thanked God when she reached home a day before.

The red haired lady is a Romanian Armenian who's been in Lebanon for 37 years. She's been through the civil war, lived it as any Lebanese lived it and she says nothing impresses her anymore. She graduated the Conservatory in Romania and she left during Ceausescu's rule. Lebanon seemed better during the civil war to her than communist Romania.

PS. There will be a few more stories in the next days. Depending how much sleep I get after the nights I spend at work.

THE FINNISH WAY

The City of Helsinki is to set up a two-person Romanian-speaking street patrol team. The purpose of the team is to reach out to Helsinki’s Roma beggars of Romanian origin. Originally the City of Helsinki had planned to establish a Romanian expert to patrol the streets. But, for the time being, they will buy the patrolling service the Helsinki Deaconess Institute. The institute’s workers will start patrolling the streets from the beginning of June. The Finnish want to investigate why the Roma leave Romania and go beg in Finland.
“We will ask them why they have arrived in Finland. Naturally it will also be interesting to find out they are genuinely victims of intimidation at home. And are the talks about their money lending and high interests true?” explained senior planning officer Johanna Seppälä from the City of Helsinki Safety and Preparedness Co-ordinating Division on Tuesday as quoted in the Helsingin Sanomat daily.
What complicates matters is the range and variety of beggars. There are peddlers of false gold and roses, those who stop cars, and petty thieves, but also women begging on their knees, who presumably have nothing to do with the previous. Some are street musicians. The usual stuff I might add.
The reason for the over-representation of Romania is the country’s sizeable Roma population, which is estimated at a minimum of two million people, the largest in Europe, the Finnish believe.
Several human rights organizations have reported on Romania’s systematic discrimination against its Roma minority.
So is putting pressure on the Romanian government through the EU one of the means toslove the problem? “Yes”, says a guy from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Definetly not, I'd say. I wonder how they will react when they really find out how complicated this whole thing is and how difficult it is to change the way people think. Try make these people stay off the streets and see what happens.

I once interviewed a Gypsy chief in a town called Tandarei in southern Romania. He had two huge houses, marble plated and was very proud of it. And proud of how he got the money for the two precious palaces.
"After the Revolution we put our children in the trunks and we went to Germany. We were hundreds of thousands. There was nothing here for us. The government wouldn't give us anything. So we left. People died then. Children suffocated in the trunks and the police at the borders had no idea. But it was worth the sacrifice. I made the money for these houses in two years. How? Social assistance. We had 10 children and we got lots of money for that. My people wouldn't steal. They are Christians." Traian Bulibasha is now a pentecostal pastor and forbids his people to lie and steal. But can he?

THE UNSEEN FACE OF THE IRANIAN ELECTIONS

I got this e-mail from my friend in Iran last night. His e-mails are very rare lately.

"Hi ana. Today (Saturday) was a tragic day here. After elections they suddenly changed the result to eliminate the candidate from my city. But people resisted and the riot began. They ruthlessly killed 4 innocents. Two of them were just people returning from school. Before my eyes. 500 m away from our home. Finally they changed the results again becoz people didn't give up. They burned every bank and gov. office. Now i am sure that they will arrest a lot of young people. It is horrible. I am sendig this email from my mobile. they r ruthless ancruel. i can't stand the scene I saw. Two 12 year old boys coming back from school with their bags. See you. I am exteremely cautious. Don't worry about me."

I haven't seen even one newsstory about any riot in Iran after the elections on Fruday. Just the official results, one short news story on France presse. It's interesting how nobody gives a shit about what really happens with the people in that country.

TIRED

Mhm. Yeah, I'm tired. That's the word describing my life lately. I get up in the morning - a very difficult mission, almost impossible sometimes - I'm always thrilled to start a new day and hardly wait to get to the newsroom and write the same shit everyday. I'm usually half an hour late at work, i get the ""pf" look from Dana or Oana, my coworkers, I feel bad about being late and try to write more for the 12 o'clock newscast so that they wouldn't be angry with me. Then I get very angry at the deputy editor in chief who kinda shows up around 1 pm, sits down and starts bugging everybody about the typos in the info bubbles that go on screen. That's his way of living. The info bubbles give this guy's life a meaning. There is nothing else this guy does, besides checking the info bubbles. Of course, the people from the foreign news department are the first in line to be bugged about the info bubbles. "You can't write Nuremberg on the info bubbles. I told you so many times! It's Nurnberg. " "What is Lhasa? Huh? What's Lhasa? Girls, it's Lhassa, I tell you!"

The guy is not very familiar with English, you have to forgive him. He must think French is the only language in the world. :)

Ok, and then I write. And write and write. And then I check for new stories. And then I write, and I write. My friends never get the chance to talk to me like they used to do. I'm alwyas irritated and I always disappear in the middle of the conversation. So, yeah, don't try to have a conversation with me on Yahoo messenger. NOT INTERESTING! You'll end up talking to yourself. And I warn you, it's frustrating.

And in no time it's 3 pm. Time my coworkers change shift. Dana leaves, Oana comes. I don't have time to say hi to her, cause I have to check for new stories, make a list and send it to the 6 o'clock newscast editor. And then I write, and I write. And then it's 6.
Should be time to go home. But traffic is hell in Bucharest at that hour. I can't cross the town to get home. It would cost me 2 hours of my life, spent with my foot stuck on the pedals - my car is a manual purple 1996 Daewood Tico giving her last breath for my sake. So I decide to stay a bit more. Maybe I should try to have a chat with a friend, but they are all too busy. I can't do anything else but understand. So I'm browsing around the Internet and I find myself on the same damn websites I search my stories on. And I get angry. I decide to leave. I get caught in traffic, spend an hour and a half on the damn bridge I have to cross to get home. I spend half an hour looking for a place to park close to the apartment building I live in. I finally get home, open the TV, open my laptop, talk to my co workers about the same damn things we do everyday. Makes me angry. The rest of the people I know are either not online or working on some project. And then my eyes get heavy and I fall asleep. With the newschannel on. So that I can get up in the morning when I hear the morning anchor's voice. My brain has already memorized her voice.

Exciting life, huh? Just a few more months. And then I'm off.

PS. YEAH, I'M SICK OF IT!

IT HAPPENS IN IRAN

Hasan is a guy who doesn't fit in in Iran. Not because he's Kurdish, but because he read almost everything western literature has to offer, although he definetly knows it's illegal. He wants to leave the country, of course, as all young Iranian people who also posess a piece of brain do. Hasan used to be a computer science teacher at the small university in his town and used to love working with students. He was so full of hope and energy when i met him. Used to work on a cowshed he and his family had started. He had just finished his Master's degree and he was so thrilled about the little calves he had to take care of. And he was as enthusiastic about the job at the university he was to start in the autumn. That was almost two years ago.

He recently resigned. Disappointement combined, he says, with the feeling of not belonging and the desire to stay in the house with all his books and study to get a PhD to a famous US University.(a US University that would not really find him eligible as a student becasue , obviously, he comes from Iran)

A few days ago he told me we were having our last chat on yahoo messenger and that he'd do something, but i won't hear about it. Of course I thought the worst. Did my best to convince him he had a lot to fight for. He really has. He's a brilliant guy. The kind of person that you know would really make a difference if he only had been given the opportunity. I have no idea if I did convince him or not. He hasn't been back online ever since. And he was really depressed. I'm afraid that he was serious and that I have no way of stopping him. I imagine how it might be to feel so lost. He can't stand talking to his own people. Most of them would betray him, of course. He almost got arrested once. I think I wrote about it before. A student asked him during a course about the Iranian president's studies. He rebelled and said Ahmadinejad's diploma's probably false. The next day the secret service people told him to keep his mouth shut or else.

One of his friends got arrested. The kid is 18 and he spoke on a few occasions in front of his fellow students about the Kurdish aspirations and the idea of a federal Iran. They took the kid to the Intelligence service office in Kermanshah and questioned him. The kid had been in Iraq recently. They already knew who he had met, of course. No PKK, nobody. But still they questioned him. They let him go only to arrest him again while he was on the bus going home. The kid was in jail for three months. This is what Hasan wrote to me a few weeks ago. Have to write this on my blog, cause which newspaper in Romania would publish this. So, they arrested the 18 year old kid.

„He was aware that they do any kind of torture just to find out what kind of relation he has with Pajak Group or PKK. And he new they would apply the most efficient of them: raping. A friend had told him about what the Revolutionary Guards used to do in 1980. The Shia believe that when a virgin dies, even unfaithful, the person goes directly to heaven. So, in order to prevent the teens they wanted to execute from going to heaven, the Guards raped them first. Stupid, but so cruel. Reminds you of the Middle Ages, doesn't it?

The first day of the arrest they tortured the poor kid. They undressed him completely and they blindfolded him. He spent 6 hours like thins on the first day. He went through the same torture the next two days, only they kept him like that longer. The kid had nothing to do with the PKK. He was just interested in Kurdish Culture and language and he went to the Iraqi Kurdistan region because he could find more there than in his own hometown.

They didn't rape him, he says. Some slams in the face and small injuries. That was all. They advised him not to ever try to contact other Kurds outside his city and try to concentrate on his study.”

And of course they used the family menace. The kid, whose name I'd rather not give, was a student. He got out of jail after his family paid some 50 000 dollars bail. A friend of his is still in jail.

„ Majid, a zealous student , a perfect atheist was the one who told him about a federal government instead of a decomposing Iran. Majid was originally from north of Iran a firm believer that Kurds are Achilles' Heel of Iran and in the case they want their independence, Iran will decompose to some small countries like Qatar or Kuwait. Majid was strongly motivated to Unite all the parties in Iran and convince them to prevent bloodshed, like it happened in Iraq. They had to recognize Kurds as a Nation not just a large tribe in order to do that. 16 Azar, December 6, is the anniversary of Student's day in Iran. An great opportunity for them to state their beliefs. They needes permission from "Daftar Tahkim" party, the opposition and the legacy of Khatami's era. They met some important figures there but they laughed at him, because every party in Iran tries to prevent the appearance of Kurds in the capital. He convinced one of them that he has 3000 Kurdish students supporting him and that they will attend the anniversary and if they don't let them organize the meeting.

The day before "16 azar " the plan was that he'd talk about the federal governing of Iran and 15 students would cover him when delivering the speech. But none of the 15 students shew up. He spoke anyway. Of course the Guards were among the public. The night after the speech some intelligence service agents and took them to "Evin", the high security jail in Iran.

It was clear that they wouldn't execute them because now everybody knew abut them from the weblogs and Websites. Some famous lawyers defended them. Majid is still in jail. He believes that in not a very distant future the regime in Tehran will be wiped out either by the people or the US.„

The Kurdish kid still has to appear in court. Nobody know when. He could be executed for trying to speak freely about his beliefs. The 18 year old had nightmares every night, Hasan says. He even has nightmares when daydreaming.

STATE SECRET IN ROMANIA, PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE IN IRAQ

I remember a press conference at the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was 2006, a year after the three Romanian journalists were kidnapped in Iraq. There was a huge scandal about the money paid by the government for freeing the journalists. I asked how much. The foreign affairs minister at the time, Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, refused to answer my question. He said no comment. We are supposed to know exactly what happened in 2005 with the three people kidnapped in Iraq only in 2055. Cause it's a state secret and a state secrete can only be made public after 50 years. That's why the Romanian Envoy in Iraq at the time didn't come to court to testify in the trial of Muhammad Munaf, the driver and one of the alleged accomplices of the kidnappers. He claims he was kidnapped too. The guy is and Iraqi-American citizen but he has been trialed in Iraq and sentenced to be hanged in october 2006 in a mock trial. A few lawyers from the Brennan Center for Justice in New York took his case pro bono and asked the American Courts for a fair trial. On February 19 this year the Iraqi Casation Court reversed the sentence for Munaf. The reason - no enough proof. Well, the Iraqis didn't think about the Romanian state secrets when they issued the decision. So they wrote a few things about what happened in 2007. One of the American lawyers, Jonathan Hafetz, sent me the translation on the decision. Surprise! The Romanians negotiated and paid the ransom. No comment!

YESTERDAY, GAZA THE LESS HORRID FOOTAGE

It seems like the Palestinians are guilty of hiding behind civilians and children and everybody should believe that THIS is an excuse to kill 50 people in one day and not to care about who those people are. I'm just thinking that maybe, just maybe, if they keep killing them, Gaza will turn into a huge grave at some point. And the UN will condemn it and then we will live happily ever after, right?