Bigotry loses in Romania

Romanians went to the polls over the weekend to vote in a constitutional referendum to ban same-sex marriage. Or rather, they didn't - because the referendum failed due to miserably low turnout:

A referendum to establish a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in Romania has failed - after only a fifth of voters bothered to turn out.

Romanians were being asked whether they wanted the constitution changed to specify that marriage can only be between a man and a woman.

But just 20.4% of eligible voters cast ballots - short of the 30% needed.

The referendum appears to have been a plot by the government to distract from ongoing corruption scandals by appealing to bigotry. Fortunately it didn't work. Those who opposed the change boycotted the poll, holding boycott parties instead. Unfortunately Romania still doesn't recognise equal marriage in law - but at least there's not a constitutional prohibition on it. Meaning that that failure to recognise can easily be overturned by the European Court on Human Rights when it catches up with the rest of society and recognises such legal bigotry as fundamentally incompatible with the ECHR's affirmations of equality and non-discrimination.

Some justice for torture

Between 2003 and 2006, Romania and Lithuania hosted CIA "black sites", secret extrajudicial prisons where alleged terrorists were rendered and tortured by America. Today, the European Court of Human Rights declared unequivocally that those prisons were illegal, and ordered their host governments to pay damages to two of their victims:

European judges have ruled that Lithuania and Romania violated the rights of two terror suspects by allowing the CIA to torture them in secret prisons within their borders.

The terror suspects — both said to be affiliated with al-Qaeda — were captured following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and they are now being held by the US at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility in Cuba.

At the time of the torture of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the CIA was operating secret prisons in several locations, including within Lithuania and Romania.

Lithuania and Romania have both been ordered by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to pay €100,000 (£88,000; $117,000) in damages to the two men. The court was unable to gain access to speak with the two men at Guantanamo.

Which is good, so far as it goes. But firstly, an EU government should not need the ECHR to know that hosting a secret CIA torture centre is illegal. And secondly, the officials and politicians who approved that hosting have not been prosecuted or held to account in any way. Which means there is no incentive for them or their successors not to do it again in future. And of course the US torturers and the officials who enabled them are all still walking free as well.

If we want to end torture, we need to prosecute these people. Until we've done that, there's no real justice.

Romania votes

Romania went to the polls yesterday in legislative elections - or at least, they were supposed to. Instead, barely 40% of them bothered to vote - a shameful result for a supposedly modern democracy. As for the results, the (former communist) Social Democrats and (former communist) Democratic Liberals are almost tied on 33% each, with the Social Democrats having a narrow lead. The current ruling party, the National Liberals are thus in the kingmaker position. While ideologically they're closer to the PDL, and have previously been in coalition with them, the election was caused by the breakup of that coalition. So, it seems that there will be some form of PSD-PNL coalition. Whether this actually reflects the will of the people is unclear - but if they don't vote, how can we know?