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Romanias prime minister has refused to repeal decrees that critics say will free corrupt officials from jail early and shield others from conviction, despite international condemnation and the biggest popular protests since the fall of communism.

We took a decision in the government and we are going to press ahead, Sorin Grindeanu said after a meeting of his ruling leftwing Social Democrats (PSD). The party leader, Liviu Dragnea, blamed an ongoing campaign of lies and disinformation for opposition to the decrees.

The PSD won elections [in December] with a huge vote. The governments power is legitimate, Dragnea said, labelling the centre-right president, Klaus Iohannis, the moral author of last nights violence.

Iohannis has threatened to take the ordinance to the constitutional court, the last legal resort to stop the emergency decrees passing into law. He said on Thursday he was impressed by the protests, adding that Romanians had clearly what they want: the rule of law.

The European commission vice-president, Frans Timmermans, urged the government to urgently reconsider, saying that Romanias EU funding could be at risk.

In a separate statement, the US, Germany, Canada, Finland, the Netherlands and France said the government had undermined progress on rule of law and the fight against corruption over the past 10 years.

Clashes broke out in Bucharest after hundreds of thousands demonstrated across Romania in a second night of protests. Bottles and firecrackers were hurled at police in the capital, who responded with teargas. Twenty people were arrested and eight injured, authorities said.

In the largest demonstrations since the fall of communist dictator Nicolae Ceauescu in 1989, up to 300,000 people braved subzero temperatures to participate in protests across 50 towns and cities, including 150,000 in the capital. There were shouts of Thieves and calls for politicians to be locked up.

On Tuesday night the government passed an emergency ordinance that would, among other things, decriminalise cases of official misconduct in which the financial damage is less than 200,000 lei (38,000). The decree is due to take effect in a little over a week.

The government says the order and another draft bill on jail pardons are needed to ease prison overcrowding and bring the criminal code into line with recent constitutional court rulings.

But many worry the changes will reverse an anti-corruption push in Romania that saw the then prime minister Victor Ponta go on trial in 2015 over alleged tax evasion and money laundering charges he denies. Prosecutors are currently investigating 2,150 cases of alleged abuse of power.

On Wednesday opposition parties filed a no-confidence motion against the government, which is led by the PSD and has only been in office a few weeks. The PSD bounced back in elections on 11 December, barely a year since mass protests forced it from office.

Dragnea is currently on trial for alleged abuse of power and is already barred from office because of a two-year suspended jail sentence for electoral fraud handed down last year. He denies any wrongdoing in relation to the latest charges.

Business minister Florin Jianu announced his resignation on Thursday, saying he disagreed with the governments stance, while PSDs deputy chair, Mihai Chirica, called on the government to scrap the decree and send it to parliament for debate.

Jianu said on Facebook: I dont want to have to tell my child that I was a coward and I agreed to something that I dont believe in ... This is what my conscience tells me to do.

The British embassy in Bucharest said it would be concerned if the decree were to shrink the scope of corruption offences and was concerned by the very limited nature of consultations with all relevant stakeholders.

Justice minister Florin Iordache, who has come under fire for publishing the decrees, will temporarily hand his duties over to a subordinate in the ministry, spokeswoman Carmen Lita said. She said it was because he had a heavy workload preparing this years budget.

The protests on Tuesday and Wednesday follow a demonstration last Sunday that drew 40,000 people, including 20,000 in the capital, and another a week earlier involving more than 15,000. More protests are expected later on Thursday.

The size of the protests and the range of protesters is hugely significant and shows the depth and breadth of anger, said Dan Brett, an associate professor at the Open University. However, [those] who [might] benefit from the law have no interest in backing down. They are working on the assumption that as with most protests they will soon fizzle out and so can be ignored.

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Romanian PM to 'press ahead' with corruption decrees as protests grow - The Guardian

Riot police stand guard as demonstrators gather in front of the government headquarters in Bucharest, on Feb. 1.

The largest protests since the collapse of communism failed to persuade Romanias government to reverselegislative changes that undermine a clampdown on corruption and have enraged the public.

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We took a decision and were going forward, Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu told a news conference with party leader Liviu Dragnea on Thursday. The party assured me we have its full support to continue our activity and proceed with the governing plan.

Source: Romanian Government

The Social Democrats face the largest backlash since the 1989uprising that ousted dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Romanias third government in two years incurred the wrath of the public andPresident Klaus Iohannis by unexpectedly easing punishments for officials who abuse their positions and seeking to free others from prison. The protestersin the European Union and NATO member back the anti-graft drive thats ensnared top officials, including an ex-Social Democrat premier.

The turmoil sent the leu 1 percent weakeragainst the euro on Wednesday,the steepest decline in more than two years and one that erased all of its 2017 gains. It had rebounded by 0.4 percent as of 5:59 p.m. Thursday in Bucharest. S&P Global Ratings said risks to Romanias investment-grade status are currently balanced.

The government wants to pardon prisoners serving sentences shorter than five years, excluding rapists and repeat offenders, and decriminalize abuse-of-office offenses for sums of less than 200,000 lei ($48,000). While it says its trying to ease prisonovercrowding, its actions would free hundreds ofex-officials and halt probes into others.

They include an investigation into Dragnea, whos seeking a retrial after receiving a suspended sentence for electoral fraud. He denies wrongdoing and on Thursday blamed the protests on a misinformation campaign and encouragement from the president.

The Social Democrats strategy is to shield current and past party politicians from corruption probes, and make it practically impossible for serving politicians to be prosecuted for corruption, James Sawyer, a London-based researcher at Eurasia Group, said in an e-mailed note.

For an explainer on the protests in Romania, click here

Iohannis, whos challenging the governments actions in theConstitutional Court, said the only way to end the unrest is to repeal the steps. Hes seeking talks with Grindeanu next week. Prosecutors said theyll investigate the process through which the cabinet approved the measures.

The controversy in Romania comes amid concern that other regional governments are undermining the rule of law. The EU has reprimanded Poland and Hungary for state encroachment on thejudiciary and the media. The government in Warsaw backed away from plans to tighten abortion rules after mass protests.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker criticized Romanias actions, saying the fight against corruption needs to be advanced, not undone. Six embassies, including those of the U.S. and Germany, said they hope the government will reverse this unhelpful course.

Anti-graft prosecutors are working on more than 2,000abuse-of-office cases. In the past two years, theyve sent more than 1,000 people to trial, seeking to recover damages in excess of 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion). The country of 19 million people ranks fourth-worst for graft in the EU, according to Berlin-based Transparency International.

Ill come here every single day until they reverse all the measures and then leave, Ionut Balcescu, a 34-year-old small-business owner,said Wednesday evening in Bucharest. They take us for fools.

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Minister Quits as Biggest Post-Communist Protests Rock Romania ... - Bloomberg

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Marek Jdraszewski, the new Archbishop of Krakow, said belief in the interchangeability of male and female, and trans ideology, was a fundamental denial of reality and absurd from a scientific point of view.

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The archbishop, whose diocese was once held by Pope John Paul II, told Catholic News Agency that Pope Francis had emphasised to him in a meeting the danger of gender ideology because it breaks with the anthropological vision of what the man [is] according[to] the work of the Creator God.

God created the man as male and female, while gender ideology does everything possible to cancel differences between man and woman, the archbishop said.

This is absurd from a biological point of view, and it does not deal just with the human being: gender ideology has dramatic consequences in social life and in current culture.

We cannot be open to this ideology, that is profoundly against God the Creator and against everything Christ himself taught us, he said.

His comments come less than a month after another Catholic bishop, Cardinal Antonio Caizares, slammed gender theory as a denial of reason that undermines the traditional family, which in turn leads to social problems such as juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, prostitution and violence against women.

In a statement released on the feast of the Epiphany, the cardinal said: We must fight for human dignity and against every type of discrimination, but denying biological differences between men and women is not a solution.

He had previously described gender ideology as the most insidious and destructive ideology in all history.

An LGBT group filed hate speech charges against him last year, accusing him of using words that were full of hatred, homophobic and sexism, and incite hatred against those who do not fit into the archaic models defended by the Catholic hierarchy.

The charges were dismissed just days later.

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Gender Ideology Is More Dangerous than Communism, Says Bishop - Breitbart News

Members of Boiko Borissovs GERB party and of the centre-right Reformist Bloc coalition held separate wreath-laying ceremonies in central Sofia on February 1, the day of remembrance of the victims of the countrys communist regime. The day also was marked by a special statement by former justice minister Hristo Ivanovs Yes Bulgaria party.

In a brief statement marking the day, released in mid-afternoon, Bulgarian head of state President Roumen Radev said that in the countrys history, there were still many open wounds and unclosed pages.

As head of state, I share the conviction that only together, telling the whole truth and without trading in the past, can we overcome the divisions in our society. Every innocent victim deserves our respect, Radev said.

In 2011, the then-government headed by Boiko Borissov voted February 1 as the day of commemoration of the victims of communism, acting on a proposal put forward by former presidents Zhelyu Zhelev and Petar Stoyanov, at the suggestion of former political exile Dimi Panitza.

The February 1 date was chosen because it is the anniversary of the 1945 killing of 147 people, including Prince Kiril, three former prime ministers, military generals and MPs, following the death sentences handed to them by a communist Peoples Court.

That Peoples Court followed large-scale extra-judicial killings of people, from local mayors to priests to police chiefs, journalists and others, at the time of the communist takeover of Bulgaria.

In the course of the Peoples Court process, from December 1944 to April 1945, a total of 12 special courts operated. More than 28 600 Bulgarians were arrested, 11 122 were put on trial, and a reported 9155 were sentenced, 2618 of them to death, while 1126 were given life sentences and others were imprisoned from one to 20 years.

The ensuing years did not see an end to repression, as large numbers of Bulgarians were forced into labour camps or otherwise internally displaced.

Radevs predecessor as President, RossenPlevneliev, who after winning election on the ticket of Boiko Borissovs centre-right GERB party was in office from 2012 to January 2017, participated over the years in wreath-laying ceremonies at commemorative events for the victims and also issued a number of statements on the issue, not only on February 1 but on other occasions, such as the commemoration of victims at the political prison camp at Belene.

Speaking at the first commemoration that he attended as head of state, in February 2012, Plevneliev said that the Peoples Court had become a symbol of the repression of the Bulgarian people.

At that ceremony, he said that the 20th century was marked by ideologically-motivated political violence, of which millions of European citizens became the victims. The difference is that in Europe the victims of this violence are remembered and revered, while in this country you still hear the calls to forget the past, Plevneliev said.

In the years since the November 1989 fall of Bulgarias communist regime, dealing with the past has been a keenly-contested issue between centre- and right-wing political forces that took on the mantle of anti-communism, and socialist politicians who have an entirely different view of the countrys communist past.

An act of Parliament approved by Bulgarias National Assembly in April 2000 deemed the communist regime and the Bulgarian Communist Party criminal. Sixteen years later, a group of centre-right MPs in the now-departed 43rd National Assembly tabled legislation providing for the outlawing and removal from public display of communist symbols, legislation that got first-reading stage approval by the time Parliament was dissolved to make way for early elections.

Attempts at lustration of former senior communist party office-bearers in the early decades of Bulgarias transition to democracy were struck down by the Constitutional Court.

In October 2016, the Constitutional Court nullified legislation approved a few months earlier by the National Assembly that removed the statute of limitations on serious crimes committed under the communist regime.

The Dossier Commission, established by statute at the end of 2006 to identify people in various walks of public life who worked for the communist-era secret services State Security and the Peoples Army military intelligence, has publicly disclosed the identities of more than 12 000 agents and collaborators. This disclosure is, by the same constitutional principles that forbid lustration and enshrine the freedom to pursue a profession, no bar to continuing in public life.

(Main photo: Members of the GERB delegation at the Sofia monument to the victims of communism)

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Bulgarian right-wing parties mark day of commemorating victims of communism - The Sofia Globe

A demonstration against decrees to pardon corrupt politicians and decriminalise other offences, on Jan. 29.

Romanias president urged the government to reverse a surprise decision to quashcorruption investigations into officials andannul some other convictions after the measures drew thousands of protesters into the streets of major cities.

About 12,000 people ralliedin freezing temperatures late Tuesday in Bucharest,demanding the government step down. At least 8,000 gathered elsewhere in the eastern European nation. The cabinet earlier backed proposals that had sparked the biggest protests since the fall of communism.Some of the changes require parliamentary approval, while others have already been published in the official journal.

This damages the judiciary and breaches its independence,President Klaus Iohannis said Wednesday, after meeting members of the Superior Council of Magistrates, which monitors the courts and is challenging the governments measures. The only option I wont accept is doing nothing about it. We must make a stand at an institutional level.

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More than 1,000 demonstrators remainedin Bucharest on Wednesday, with further demonstrations planned for the evening. The turmoil sent the leu 1.2 percent weaker, heading to the biggest decline in more than 3 1/2 years and more than erasing its 2017 gain against the euro.

Concerns have arisenin other parts of the region that democracy is under threat. The EU has reprimanded Poland and Hungary for state encroachment on thejudiciary and the media. The government in Warsaw backed away from plans to tighten abortion rules after mass protests. European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker criticized Romanias actions on Wednesday.

The fight against corruption needs to be advanced, not undone, Juncker said in a statement. Were following the latest developments in Romania with great concern.

The government says its trying to relieve overcrowded prisons, where conditions have led to cases being filed with the European Court for Human Rights.I took into account all the requests of the people and amended the bills, Justice Minister Florin Iordache said Wednesday. He said he stands-by his plan, despite the protests.

If the pardons legislation is approved, prisoners serving sentences shorter than five years --excluding rapists and multiple offenders -- will befreed, according to Iordache. A separate emergency decree decriminalized abuse of public office for offenses concerning less than 200,000 lei ($48,000) of damages.

Anti-graft prosecutors, whove locked up hundreds of corrupt officials in a four-year clampdown, said Wednesday that theyre currently working on more than 2,000abuse-of-office cases. In the past two years alone, theyve sent more than 1,000 people to trial, seeking to recover damages in excess of 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion).

Romania ranks fourth-worst for graft in the EU, according to Berlin-based Transparency International. Social Democratic leader Liviu Dragnea is serving a two-year suspended sentence for electoral fraud and faces anotherabuse-of-office probe in which he denies wrongdoing.

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Romanians Flood Streets as Cabinet Defies Protests Over Pardons - Bloomberg