RUMANIAN RUIN
LAST Tuesday, the European Parlia- ment's Committee on Human Rights met in Brussels to hear testimony about condi- tions inside Rumania. Doina Cornea and three other Rumanian dissidents were in- vited to attend. They were refused permis- sion to come (and perhaps never received their invitations).
There would have been less embarrass- ment all round if a couple of Labour MEPs had stayed away. After hearing details of Ceausescu's birth policy forcing every woman to have five children, Richard Balfe commented, 'Sounds like a right- wing paradise.' Stan Newens's constituents around King's Cross could match any sufferings in Bucharest with horror stories of their own. Brother Stan, one of nature's fraternal delegates, was equally anxious to quash reports of cultural genocide. He had seen lots of books in the minorities' lan- guages, but he overlooked that they were usually by that prolific author, N. Ceauses- cu.
Fortunately, the other Europeans have given more thought to the problem. The demolition of Rumania's rural heritage and the terrible degradation of its environment have become a European-wide scandal. To discourage Ceausescu's destructive mania, European politicians propose measures ranging from trade boycotts to pressure from the Community on Mikhail Gor- bachev to stop the annual import into the Soviet Union of a quarter of Rumania's meat-production. Others think that the vanity of the Conducator would be bitterly humiliated if Western governments strip- ped him of honours granted in the past, and returned those he had granted to our leaders.
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