A New Victory of the Truth!

Gregorian Bivolaru Was Innocent Of All The Charges On Which He Was Imprisoned And Tortured!

On Monday, July 4th 2011, the solution of the Court of Bucharest to Case no. 48765/3/2010 was released. The Court ruled in favour of Gregorian Bivolaru.

In this legal file, in October 2010, Gregorian Bivolaru requested through a lawyer that the Romanian justice acknowledge the following:
• the political character of the convictions he was a subject of before the Revolution, in 1977 and 1984;
• the political character of his hospitalization in the Psychiatric Hospital of Poiana-Mare in 1989 and
• compensation for the moral damage inflicted on him.

During the communist period, Gregorian Bivolaru was arrested, tortured, calumniated, savagely beaten and unjustly accused because he continued to practice Yoga, even after it was prohibited by law, thus going against the ideology of the communist regime which opposed any kind of development of the human being (moral, spiritual, cultural).

Gregorian Bivolaru came to the attention of the Security already in 1972, due to his correspondence with Mircea Eliade. During the same year the Security conducted the first search of his home at the time, and seized a large amount of his notes, the result of many hours of hard work in different libraries in Bucharest, as well as several books on Yoga and paranormal phenomena, which he had obtained with great effort. On the same grounds, in 1977 he was harassed, accused and finally sentenced for possession and distribution of obscene material.

The persecution became even more violent in the beginning of the 80’s and was associated to what was called „The Transcendental Meditation Affair”. On the 27th April 1982 Nicolae Ceauşescu requested that the Institute for Psychological and Pedagogic Studies be closed down. As part of the Transcendental Meditation, Gregorian Bivolaru was detained for three days inside the Security headquarters in Rahova Street, in Bucharest.

At the end of the three days of detention, before he was released, he was taken into the office of the director of that department of the Security, the Colonel Gheorghe Vasile, who warned him that he knew he had been chosen as the leader of the Transcendental Meditation and told him to stop any activity in that direction, because otherwise he would end up in prison. The prohibition regarding the Transcendental Meditation techniques was extended by the Security also to „yoga and any other oriental inspired rituals.”

In that political context, the firm option of Gregorian Bivolaru to continue practicing yoga together with his friends was seen by the authorities as an activity which opposed the communist regime, and it resulted in him and his friends being constantly followed and persecuted. In the files of the Security Gregorian Bivolaru was called a fanatical element, and during investigations the security agents were beating and torturing him, with an immense cynicism and cruelty, all in order to persuade him to make certain declarations. A quite interesting event during that period was his escape from the detention at the headquarters of the Security, an escape which was intended as a form of protest against the injustice and brutality of the investigators. Gregorian Bivolaru used certain abilities which he had awoken through the yoga practice in order to escape the Security detention, in 1984.

The indictment drawn by the prosecution of the Court of Bucharest in August 1984 stated that he was charged for several criminal acts, but in the sentence no. 960 of the 28th of September given by the Judge of the 4th District of Bucharest he was only sentenced for the escape to 1 year and a half of imprisonment, since for all the other charges there had been an amnesty. During the imprisonment he was kept in a special cell, with heavy chains around his ankles weighing around 6-7 kilos. Later on, in 1989, he was arrested again and detained by the Security, beaten and tortured, and then committed into the Psychiatric Hospital of Poiana Mare in an attempt to mentally and psychologically annihilate him. He was saved by the remarkable courage of the doctor who was in charge of him and who, realizing that he was not ill, refused to give him the prescribed medication.

Considering all the abuse and persecution, Gregorian Bivolaru requested the Romanian authorities to acknowledge that the real reasons behind the conviction and unjust hospitalization in Poiana Mare were of a political nature and were ordered by the Security. The Court admitted this to be true and accepted his request. Here is a summary of the sentence:

„THE REQUEST IS PARTIALLY ACCEPTED.

THE POLITICAL CHARACTER OF THE CONVICTION OF THE PETITIONER THROUGH THE CRIMINAL SENTENCES NO. 68/1977 AND NO. 960/1984 IS ACKNOWLEDGED.

THE POLITICAL CHARACTER OF THE HOSPITALIZATION OF THE PETITIONER THROUGH THE CRIMINAL SENTENCE NO. 616/1989 IS ACKOWLEDGED.

THE REQUEST FOR COMPENSATION IS DENIED. This decision can be appealed.”

The decision shows that Gregorian Bivolaru was a victim of the communist regime, and the similarities between the charges brought against him during that period and some of the charges included in the fabricated legal files nowadays suggest the idea of a continuity of the persecution, based on ideological grounds (as stated in the decision of the Supreme Court of Justice from Sweden which rejected the request for extradition of Gregorian Bivolaru and granted him political asylum). The decision of the Court of Bucharest is even more significant considering that during the denigration campaign against Gregorian Bivolaru after 1989 it was often pointed out that he was a „common criminal” because he had been in prison during the communist regime.

Regarding the compensation requested, we need to mention that the legislation has recently changed and no request for compensation has been accepted since then.

Related Articles