Closing of 2013 ARA Field School
THE ASSOCIATION "ARCHITECTURE. RESTORATION. ARCHAEOLOGY" (ARA) ANNOUNCES HEREBY:
The closing before term of the 2013 Roșia Montană Field School (ARA Field School)
On September 9, 10 and 11, 2013 the organizers Ștefan Bâlici and Virgil Apostol together with the participants to the ARA Field School have been aggressed physically and verbally by several individuals, identified as employees and/or sympathisers of Roșia Montană Gold Corporation (RMGC), wearing working uniforms with distinctive signs and logos of RMGC.
The safety and integrity of the students, participants and not last of the organizers of the ARA Field School have been seriously menaced. The organizers of the field school cannot guarantee any more for the participants' safety.
As a consequence, the ARA Association is forced to declare the proceedings of the ARA Field School closed and to cease the restoration works implemented through the Adopt a House at Roșia Montană programme. We thank the participants to the ARA Field School for their understanding and the people of Roșia Montană for their support.
However, we wish to emphasyse that victims to these violent acts from those who are employees or sympathisers of RMGC are not only the organizers and students of the ARA Field School, but also certain members of the community of Roșia Montană, who have become in this stretch of time targets of a range of aggressions without precedent: death or beating threats, hustles, spitting.
We appeal to the entitled authorities - local police and gendarmerie - and to organisations specialized in the defending of human rights to guarantee effectively the safety of all citizens of Roșia Montană without discrimination as to their oppinions on the project proposed by RMGC. The aggressions of September 9, 10 and 11, 2013 do not represent an isolated fenomenon, but an instrument already patented and well tested by individuals who appear within the Roșia Montană community as representatives/employees and/or sympathisers of RMGC.
Despite RMGC having a so-called programme suposedly dedicated to the local community, in reality the members of the community are just tools for the manipulation in view of forcing the mining project approval. The acts of physical and verbal violence are not laking from this manipulation.
Direct or indirect manipulation of the Roșia Montană community members against one-another, the use of the RMGC employees and sympathisers or of simple citizens for attempted aggressions, physical and moral aggressions against another group of citizens are criminal acts. These have to stop!
September 11, 2013
Roșia Montană
dr. Monica Mărgineanu Cârstoiu, ARA President
dr. Ștefan Bâlici, ARA Vice-president
dr. Virgil Apostol, ARA Secretary
