Human rights organizations have published an open letter calling on the President of Romania to fire the Internal Affairs Minister. The reason is an incident in which police in the south of the country assaulted a group of Romani men as they were lying on the ground.
News server BalkanInsight.com reports that the assault was captured on video and Romanian news server Libertatea published it online last Thursday, calling the footage an "image typical of a country governed by a military junta". News server Romea.cz is publishing the open letter in full below.
The footage shows Romanian police officers walking among the Romani men who are prone on the ground while one officer repeatedly beats one of the men with a truncheon. The blows of the truncheon and the man's howling can be heard on the audio track.
The officers in the footage shout "Stay home!" and a great deal of vulgar abuse as well. The video has sparked strong resistance from many human rights activists in Romania.
