25 July 2013
A roundup of news from Romania
România Internațional, 25.07.2013, 13:57
The President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, the head of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Jean-Claude Mignon and the French President Francois Holland have strongly condemned the assassination of the Tunisian opposition leader Mohammed Brahmi. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has asked for a quick and transparent investigation so that the authors of the crime should be punished. Mohammed Brahmi was shot dead in front of his house on Thursday morning. Brahmi, a member of the National Constituent Assembly, was commissioned with drawing up a new Constitution. This is the second time an opposition party leader has been killed in Tunisia this year . Prominent secular politician Chokri Belaid was killed in February. His murder sparked protests and forced the then prime minister to resign.
Over 100 thousand people have died since the beginning of the conflict in Syria, in March 2011, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday, when he asked for another peace conference to be organised on this issue. On the other hand, the the UN and the Arab League Special Representative for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said in an interview with the BBC that there was no military solution for the internal conflict in Syria. He warned that the delivery of weapons to rebels or to president Bashar al-Assad’s forces would do nothing but extend the conflict and would, by no means, solve anything.
The Romanian State Secretary for European Affairs, George Ciamba, has criticized in a communiqué the statements made by the participants in the Hungarian Youth Summer School in Baile Tusnad, Central Romania, regarding the regionalization process in Romania. He has said that the opinions voices by the Hungarian State Secretary Nemth Zsolt, are an intrusion into a democratic, legitimate and sovereign process in Romania. Geroge Ciama has stressed that the administrative and territorial reorganization of Romania is in line with the international rules in the field, and adopting such measures is in full compliance with the international obligations Romania has committed itself to under the treaties it is a party to.
Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta on Thursday sent a condolences letter to his Spanish counterpart Mariano Rajoy, following the train accident on Wednesday evening in Santiago de Compostela that caused the death of at least 80 people. The head of the Madrid government declared three days of national mourning, following what is believed to be one of the worst train accident in Spain in over 40 years. According to local authorities there are foreign citizens among the victims, but it is not known yet if any of them are Romanians. Romania’s ambassador in Spain set up a crisis cell and sent an assistance team to Santiago de Compostela, a reagion that is home to about 9,000 Romanians.
Members of the Railway Unions Federation in Romania on Thursday protested against the privatization of the Freight Division of the Romanian Railway Company. People are unhappy with the reduction of the working program from 5 to 4 days a week, the reduction of salaries and the lack of management transparency. On Wednesday, the Romanian Government approved the privatization contract. Railway workers are afraid tat once the purchase contract signed, thousands of employees will be made redundant. The privatization of the company is one of the measures that the government committed itself to taking under the precautionary agreement signed with the IMF in 2011.
Romanian tennis player Sorana Cirstea qualified for the quarter finals of the WTA tournament in Stanford Los Angeles, with 795,707 dollars in prize money. She defeated Coco Vandeweghe of the US 6-3, 6-3. Cirstea, who is the 5th favorite of the tournament, has so far got a check of 19.300 dollars and 120 WTA points. The next match will be against Byelorussian Olga Govortova, who defeated Australian Samantha Stosur.
