The stench of death in the Romanian state

Do I own the stories I'm presented with? Have I the autonomy and wherewithal to follow stories once they're ripped from sight, or do I, like an airborne little whippet, dive towards the next fleeting thing as directed?

It seems lately wherever I look, there is death. The looming promise of. I took a long walk yesterday trying to find the balance that I need to allow me to negotiate this present, so that I may, in turn, help the ones who suffer more acutely. Turn from private grievings to public outrage.

Yesterday morning, I remembered a story.

One man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny. (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

I'd been so caught up in my own life, I'd let it slip for a few days, but then, it occurred to me, quite out of the blue, that I may not have those days to spare.

A couple of months back, during Romania's fraudulent presidential election, there was quite a bit of cancan buzz regarding a certain individual. Cezar Avrămuţă, known to most as "Stegarul Dac" (the Dacian Flag Bearer), is a familiar face to anyone who has attended protests in Bucharest in the last 10 years. He became a comforting sight to me personally during the long years of the pandemic when the oppression and injustice leveled against the general population was at least as thick as a knee on the neck.

The man was quite a sight - with his tall, imposing frame, his long priestly beard, and the full traditional costume. Ever-present, of course, was the flag he chose to wave, in protest, from on high. Cezar Avrămuţă frequently used to climb buildings, trees, and anything scalable, really, to wave the flag of his home-nation, appropriately, from on high.

Previously a mathematics teacher, he gave up teaching to fully dedicate himself to protesting and civic activism. Unfortunately for him, he did not happen to side with the causes deemed noble and worthwhile by the status quo. As I mentioned, he was a prominent figure during the Covid years, standing against tyrannical and idiotic restrictions of liberty and other measures employed against the individual.

More recently, he took to protesting against one of the gravest and sickest abuses of justice carried out in Europe ever since the Iron Curtain fell. As many here know, the presidential election of December 2024 was annulled as it was taking place on account of "external involvement", unproven and unfounded. The wrong candidate was quite clearly going to win, and in modern democracies, you are not allowed to vote for the wrong candidate.

The candidate in question was soon disqualified, arrested, and had his name dragged through the mud, together with anyone who supported him. Suddenly, the people who supported Calin Georgescu, aka the majority of the Romanian people, were gullible imbeciles, authoritarian sympathizers, and crazed conspiracy theorists. The MSM and the powers that be actively encouraged this othering, driving as they could, the polarization and fracturing of Romanian society.

Many still protested against the illegal annulment of so-called democratic elections. Not all of them on account of sympathizing with Georgescu, merely driven by the not-so-long-ago memory of other totalitarian regimes with a complete and utter disregard for personal freedom.

One of those protesting was Cezar Avrămuţă, who chose to make his opinion known in the by now familiar manner- climbing high and making a stand. Except it must've bothered somebody somewhere - the authorities started coming after him in every way they knew how. To date, Stegarul Dac has been assaulted, beaten, kicked, arrested, and forcibly committed to a mental asylum four times, despite copious evidence that such a measure was neither necessary nor justified.

During the re-scheduled elections in May, he was the recipient of copious amounts of online ridicule and abuse. The poor loony. The "naughty" crazy man stuck in his stupid little ways. To me, the online ridicule was particularly vile - after all, the man's only "crime" was protesting against a deeply corrupt system. It was particularly grating to see useful idiots mock this man's education online, especially as in the next breath, they fawned over the new president's Sorbonne background.

Cezar Avrămuţă was arrested back in May, kept in jail, then released into house arrest, which he broke on the night the election results were announced. He went to protest, alone, in the Heroes' Square. You know, where all those nice ladies and gentlemen were murdered during the Revolution in '89.

When the police arrested him the second time, idiots everywhere rejoiced, then swiftly forgot. Nowadays, you don't hear about Cezar Avrămuţă that much in Romanian media. A brief update here and there, but nothing compared to the efforts to stoke the fire against him back in May.

Now, it's perfectly acceptable not to care. To forget. Except this is how we forget we are human, and that must not be allowed.

As of today, Cezar Avrămuţă has been on hunger strike for 19 days. He is, according to his own wife, "skeletal and bears the stench of death. Nobody hears. Nobody cares. Among those of us who do, it's said his end is nigh. There is hope. According to his lawyer, and fellow freedom fighter, Dan Chitic, the Flag Bearer will end his hunger strike tonight, on account of getting some strength for his hearing tomorrow. After all, some political hunger strikers notably survived. Many did not. Perhaps Cezar Avrămuţă is one of the lucky ones, though I imagine surviving into a corrupt, rotten state as ours is little consolation.

I wrote this because I thought his actions are worth remembering on the blockchain. I wrote this out of rage. I wrote this with the infuriating realization that, had his actions coincided with the MSM agenda, he would've been martyrized. After all, an alleged lack of education and open defiance of the law never bothered other social justice movements, did it?

Finally, I wrote this because it angered me, how easily the morons who laughed at and mocked Cezar Avrămuţă only 2 months ago now no longer even remember his name. It's appalling, the lack of care, especially in ones who otherwise boast of being caring, compassionate souls. Compassion isn't compassion if it only applies to "your side". Injustice is still injustice, even if it targets your neighbor, and not specifically you.