Radu Filipescu

Radu Filipescu ( born December 26, 1955 in Târgu Mureş, Romania ) is a former dissident anti Communist resistance in Romania.

Life

Family

Radu Filipescu is the youngest son of Zorel Filipescu and Carmelita - Ileana Filipescu. His older brother is Doru Filipescu, an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital Sf. Ioan in Bucharest. Filipescu since 1988 has been married to Daniela Filipescu, an anesthesiologist and director of an intensive care unit in the hospital CC Iliescu, also in Bucharest. Both have a son, Radu- Zorel Filipescu, who was born on 2 February 1998. Radu Filipescu is the nephew of Victor Groza, Petru Groza's brother, the first Prime Minister of the first Communist government of Romania.

Filipescu as a dissident

Filipescu studied 1974-1979 electronics at the University of Bucharest.

As an expression of his political protest against the neo-Stalinist dictatorship of the Socialist Republic of Romania under Nicolae Ceauşescu, the young electrical engineer Radu Filipescu printed between December 1982 and May 1983 at the basement of his parents about 10,000 leaflets and distributed them together with his best friend in Bucharest mailboxes. In it, he called on the receiver, thereby giving their protest against Ceausescu expression, while walking two hours on January 30, 1983 to a certain place. However, this protest did not take place.

The Romanian Securitate was aware of his actions and drew several hundred additional employees to Bucharest in order to specifically monitor the apartment block in which no leaflets were found. On May 7, 1983, when Filipescu stood in front of a mail box and was about to open his bag to distribute further leaflets, he was asked by the Securitate, arrested, interrogated for five months, and was later sentenced to ten years in prison. In December 1984, he was presented by Amnesty International as a "Prisoner of the Month" ( German prisoners of the month).

His father Zorel Filipescu, a well-known doctor, tried shortly after " secretly " prominent personalities to contact them to talk to a dissident action, but this failed, as well as experiments on political contacts within the family. Herma Kennel wrote in There are things that you simply must do. The resistance of the young Radu Filipescu: " All acquaintance, Dr. Filipescu spoke were against the regime. But no one was willing to give a concrete action. " Nevertheless succeeded parents Filipescus to build a network of friends and colleagues who helped to bring news of her son abroad. After three years of detention in the prisons of Rahova, Jilava and Aiud Radu Filipescu was on 18 April 1986, following international pressure from NGOs such as the French League for Human Rights, the German International Society for Human Rights, the Swiss organization Le Pavé and politicians from Western Europe the United States released early.

After his release Filipescu was monitored around the clock; the Securitate followed him even while jogging. Filipescu: " The first time I ran thick officials afterward. " Then you 've worried a team of athletes who followed him from now on. As Radu Filipescu again leaflets with the call for a referendum in September 1987, "Who for Ceauşescu, will meet at the place of the victory of socialism, who is against him, to come to the place of unity. " Distributed and a French television crew interviewed gave, the Securitate was irritated. In December 1987, he was interrogated by the same officials as the first time, but this time beaten and abused. In order not to betray his family, he invented the story of an English diplomat who had smuggled the news abroad. Filipescus family managed meanwhile to keep informed abroad. After the then French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac used for Filipescu and arrested for an interview in the same television program dissident Doina Cornea, both ( Filipescu after 10 days ) were released.

In May 1988, Filipescu tried along with other former political prisoners, notably Gheorghe Năstăsescu, Philip Julius, Iancu Marin, Carol Olteanu, Costica Purcaru Totu Victor, a free trade union named " Libertatea " to establish ( German Freedom). The venture failed, however, because Applicant has been advised of the Securitate under pressure so that a broad support in the population could not be reached.

Filipescu took an active part in the Romanian Revolution of 1989, and was arrested on the morning of December 22, 1989 in the wake of the riots, but was released again in the afternoon. As a result, he was at times a member of the Council of the National Salvation Front. From 1990 to 1996, he created reports and studies on the situation of human rights in Romania and Moldova. Between 1990 and 2006 he wrote articles for the magazine Revista 22

Inventions and after founding of the Romanian Revolution

In his work as an electronics Filipescu invented as an alternative to the crocodile clip called parrot clamp (English parrot clip, United States Patent 5,457,392, European Patent 0563234 ), for which he on the Eureka World Fair of Inventions in Brussels won the gold medal in 1991. In 1992, he founded the company " Parrot Invent SRL ", which deals with the development and marketing of programmable timers for building lighting and other patented electronics products.

Memberships

• Founding member of the "Group for Social Dialogue " in 1989, Chairman in 1991, 1994 to 2000
• Founding member and vice chairman of the Romanian " Helsinki Committee " ( APADOR -CH ) in 1990, Chairman in 1991 and 1992

Honors

• Freedom Prize of the Danish " Poul Lauritzen Foundation ", 1992
• In July 1997 Filipescu by U.S. President Bill Clinton received in the course of his visit to Romania a high five.

Assessment

The writer and journalist William Totok remarked: ". Precisely because of the specific singularity of the Ceauşescu system can the Radu Filipescus action is difficult to compare with similar protest actions - such as the Scholl siblings in Nazi Germany " It was not just "a, one could almost say suicidal protest of a political maverick, but also a psychological profile of a solidified deeply in egalitarian opportunism society that functions only according to the rules of a sober self-preservation principle. Failure to adapt to these unwritten laws of a society that called itself socialist, had dramatic consequences for the individual. The adjustment pressure came both from the narrow circle of the family, relatives and friends as well as by the representatives of the society and the state. This double pressure to which everyone was more or less exposed to one way or another, had disastrous consequences. He influenced public action, speaking, the performances. This invisible - visible pressure produced deformations, which facilitated the work of the dreaded apparatus of repression ( the police, the Securitate and the judiciary ). "

Radu Filipescu said in an interview published in 2013: " When I tell my story today, I always ask people what they would take if they could select one: three years' imprisonment or ten days blows " [ ... ] "This is not the problem. The problem is that there are no rules. That anything can happen. And this is the mechanism of terror. " [ ... ] " We have achieved a lot. We have become a democratic society in which in some areas ruled by law ".