The Institute for the Investigation of the Communism Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER) announced on Friday that a judge of the Bucharest Court of Appeal admitted a request to refer the matter to the Constitutional Court regarding the decision of the General Prosecutor’s Office to close an investigation concerning the crimes committed by the communist regime at the Siret Hospital for Chronic Neuropsychiatric Children.
According to a press release sent to AGERPRES, IICCMER says that, on 25 June 2018, it submitted a complaint to the Prosecutor General’s Office regarding the commission of the crime of inhuman treatment applied during the communist regime to children in the Siret Hospital for Chronic Neuropsychiatric Children . The complaint referred to the period from 1 January 1980 to 22 December 1989, when 340 minors died.
On 13 March 2023, a prosecutor from the General Prosecutor’s Office issued a closure order in the case, and on 7 April 2023 IICCMER filed a complaint against this document, which it considered unlawful and unfounded, with the superior prosecutor.
The Institute’s complaint was rejected by the senior prosecutor, on the grounds that IICCMER did not have a “legitimate interest” in making such a request, as it was not a genuine victim involved in the case, but a mere complainant.
Subsequently, IICCMER appealed against the decision to close the case to the Bucharest Court of Appeal, after which, on Friday, a judge of this court decided to refer the matter to the Constitutional Court with an exception of unconstitutionality regarding the provisions of Article 336 para. 1 rep. to Art. 339 para. 4 and 6 and art. 340 par. 1 Code of Criminal Procedure, as interpreted by RIL Decision no. 13/2011, which refers to the right of persons to lodge a complaint against criminal prosecution acts drawn up by prosecutors.
Located in the northern part of Romania, the Siret Hospital for Neuropsychiatric Children, suggestively called in the language of the locals “Orphanage of Horrors,” was established in 1956 by order of the minister of Health, being one of the first medical units in communist Romania dedicated to neurological diseases of children.
Most of the deaths occurred in the winter months, the causes being, in an overwhelming proportion, pulmonary diseases, followed by epilepsy, heart, kidney, liver and gastrointestinal diseases.
The triggering historical context was created in 1966, when the communist regime in Romania initiated one of the most restrictive pro-natalist demographic policies.
The forced population growth, strictly quantitative, without respect for the human being and without ensuring all decent living conditions, had among its consequences an increase in maternal and infant mortality, an unprecedented increase in the number of children born with serious congenital malformations, with physical and mental disorders, with various diseases inherited or acquired after birth, thousands of children becoming orphans and an impressive number being abandoned.
