The right to peaceful protest is a given in Europe.  Or certainly, so you would think. 

Students in Romania have woken up to a disturbingly different reality after the Government went to great lengths to obstruct student protests at the current state of higher education in the country.

On 2nd April, students and student representatives, including ESU's Romanian member NUS, ANOSR, held a day of protests across the whole of Romania to call attention to serious problems affecting the education system, including a lack of student consultation, small scholarships, increased tuition fees who do not manage to obtain a state-funded place, a lack of quality in education services and insufficient and incoherent policies aimed at improving the condition of students and the higher education system as a whole. In total, some 6,000 students took to the street in 12 cities around the country.

However, the protests were marred by the Government's clear refusal to allow students the right to freedom of expression, with a coordinated series of measures designed to undermine and obstruct the demonstrations, including pro-protest posters and materials being torn down before the demonstration, threatening phone calls made by university officials to participating students and organisers, police ransacking the HQ of one of the protesting unions and briefly arresting and detaining some of the campaign workers, and students being pressured into not attending and blocked from doing so in every possible way.  It was a similar story during the protests themselves, with the police in Bucharest making threatening statements to protesters and only moving away once the press turned up.

ESU deplores the severe breaches of basic human and democratic rights to peaceful protest and freedom of expression that are clearly taking place in Romania.  We call upon the Romanian Government to engage constructively with student respresentatives, including ANOSR. and to listen to, and act on, students' legitimate concerns over their educational future.  In addition, we strongly assert that such obstructive, underhand and undemocratic tactics should not employed again against any group in society wishing to assert its right to peaceful demonstration.