The attack at Râul Alb did not fall from the sky as an unfortunate event appearing out of the blue in the middle of a Sunday in May 2015. Put together, the events preceding the attempted murder give the picture of a diabolical scenario, staged in mafia style. The lynching was unleashed when the business I had been working on for several years had begun to take shape. By then I had gone through all the stages of studies, public debate, and approval. Although they knew from the officially received answers that the projects were legally approved and complied with environmental standards, the agitators expanded their media barrage against us through a campaign of denigration and harassment that began in 2014 and continues even now (video 4.1).
In the autumn of 2014, I informed the authorities that I had begun construction work on the two MHPs for which I had all the approvals and building permits obtained legally. At the end of the year, I would find out that the members of the NGO Efectul Fluture, Dejeu Călin and Brădăţan Roxana Pencea, had begun to “bombard” the authorities with complaints and notifications in order to block the investments at Râul Alb. That is when I made the decision to stop the work on the micro-hydropower plants until the institutions’ inspections were completed. “At all times, only one opinion was publicized (in the so-called “environmentalist” press, our note), that of the NGOs, never the real situation as it results from the documents submitted to the competent authorities for regulating such projects”, says Georgeta Barabaş, director of the APM Hunedoara.
Recruiting “Followers” and the First Raids
From November 2014, Dejeu Călin began to come to Râul Alb. Therefore, he was aware that work on the micro-hydropower plants was no longer being carried out. Moreover, the “biologist” from Cluj found himself a local informant, in the person of Sălăşan Luca, who provided monitoring services at Dejeu’s request, as he would admit during the hearings. Sălașan passed through the area about 7-8 times and “reported” to Dejeu that the works on the site were at the same stage at which they had seen them when the two of them had been together at Râul Alb. Why did they not stop when they found that I had halted the work on the micro-hydropower plants? As I said in the previous episode, the explanation appeared at the beginning of March 2015, when a friend of Dejeu’s came with the proposal to carry out the works on the MHP at Coroiesti for me. At the same time, he also made me the proposal to sell him the project altogether. The friend of the “Cluj biologist” had also built two micro-hydropower plants at Cugir and one at Baru Mare about which – obviously! – you could not have found out from the protests of the activists Dejeu & Co, for the simple reason that there were no challenges against these MHPs. Because I did not agree with the friend’s proposals, Dejeu intensified the lynching by publishing several denigrating articles. Likewise, the former USR senator Goţiu Mihai, Dejeu’s cousin, was co-opted into the manipulation game to stir up a scandal at the national level. On 9 March 2015, Goţiu published on his Facebook page a call to mobilization for blocking the investments: “COME ON, IT CAN BE DONE! The micro-hydropower plants have stormed even the Dinosaurs’ park in Haţeg, in one of the last wild floodplains of Romania. For half a year, a Cluj biologist, by the name of Dejeu Călin, has been on the authorities’ backs with notifications and complaints, gathering signatures and alerting even the international community. So that it is not just a formal inspection, sign the petition too and pass it on. Let them know we are keeping an eye on them (and not just an eye)”(doc.1).
“And not just an eye”?! Well, the message did not remain just words in the wind, if you consider that two months later, on 24 May 2015, one of the “activists” committed the attempted murder.
The Local Division of Provocateurs
In order to prevent us from continuing the investments at Râul Alb, the so-called Andrioni Alin, Sălăşan Luca, Leordean Vasile, Leordean Sara, and Muntean Dacian also joined the group of “environmentalists.” These formed the local team, Andrioni Alin being known in the area for his harassment actions against public figures. Before committing the attempted murder, on 24 May 2015, he had appeared in the local press with the scandals he had caused over time. He chose his targets, who were usually people inconvenient to his interests, looking for various reasons to compromise them. An obvious example in this regard was reported by ZIARUL Hunedoreanului, which shows how he harassed the mayor of Densuş commune, Traian Bugari: “He is not at his first provocation. Alin Andrioni was involved a week ago in a huge scandal. He followed the mayor of Densuş commune, Traian Bugari, to his home and accused him of using the town hall’s car for personal purposes. At one point, the mayor lost his temper and threatened Andrioni Alin with a pitchfork. Traian Bugari then declared that he regretted the gesture, but that he had been provoked several times by Andrioni. “I will consult with the lawyers and see what I will do next. I lost my temper, but I could no longer endure it. I was provoked several times by this individual, including during Local Council meetings,” said Traian Bugari, the mayor of Densuş commune. Alin Andrioni, known in the area as “the Vigilante of Hațeg,” ran for the office of mayor or member of parliament in Ţara Haţegului, on behalf of several parties, losing each time, lamentably. No election campaign in which Andrioni participated was without scandals, he being the one who provoked the incidents”(art.1). From the article we see that Andrioni Alin used to resort to these gestures before the day on which he committed the attempted murder. With great pleasure he called himself “the Vigilante of Hațeg”. He wanted at any cost to gain public notoriety and electoral capital, as can be seen in the film he posted on YouTube on 11.05.2015 (video 2) and the article: http://cioaravopsita.ro/primar-contra-cetățean-faza-pe-furci-video/(doc.2).
# Mobilization and Scandal
Andrioni Alin descended on the route of the investments at Râul Alb, on 28 March 2015, together with Mihai Goţiu, Delinescu Florin, Dacian Munteanu, and Laura Vesa. He incited the members of the group on social networks to mobilize for blocking the projects. On his Facebook account, Andrioni Alin Constantin wrote: “Hațeg Geopark: green light for the destruction of the protected environment! Ţara Hațegului, I truly love you!!… not like others… only out of self-interest!… Only united can we block this project!”(doc.3). Likewise, Goţiu Mihai continued the attacks, publishing on his Facebook account and on the website romaniacurata.ro several tendentious articles about me, saying that I am an aggressive mobster. “It is a critical moment,” says Dejeu. “The valley is guarded, in mafia style, by the company’s owner and “volunteers,” with clubs and dogs. I filed a criminal denunciation regarding the illegal deforestation, which has begun, but the authorities are doing nothing.” This morning, at the România Curată address, we received several images from the same area, where timber is being massively cut. Upstream from the area where the logs were brought down there is both a natural park and the Retezat National Park. The two young people who tried to climb up the valley (and who took the photographs) accuse that they were allegedly assaulted by a local councilor and two other people who were with him, being blocked from going further (WE WILL RETURN WITH DETAILS)”.
One month later, on 27 April 2015, Goţiu Mihai wrote another article on romaniacurata.ro through which he promoted the idea that the micro-hydropower plants at Râul Alb would destroy Romania’s future: “it is an illustrative case of the way in which the country’s future is destroyed piece by piece, because of petty interests, ignorance, indolence, the flagrant violation of legal norms – from those regarding public consultation to the national and European provisions concerning environmental protection (…) with illegal cutting of trees and one step away from dynamiting the banks of one of the last virgin rivers in Romania.”
The comments made by the “activists” and their friends on this article are telling:
Mariana 27 April 2015 at 13:50: “Correct! When do we take to the streets? On 3 May?”
Mariana 27 April 2015 at 13:59: “Mihai Goţiu, thank you for alerting us. You gather signatures, what can be done with these signatures? Concretely! We can go more than 50 people, for example, to that construction site until a scandal breaks out, to prevent the continuation of the works. Because the rivers, the mountains are ours, everyone’s, and obviously we are taking them back. The scandal will be publicized by Nașu TV and will be broadcast on a TV station, so the world will find out that people are opposing. In this way we mobilize everyone. Shall we do this?
Corneliu Zeana 27.04.2015 at 18:05 we must categorically oppose this anti-nature project! Corneliu Zeana”(art.2).
This article was the “declic” (the trigger) that set off a new wave of hatred in the virtual environment. That is when they encouraged each other to come in large numbers to our construction site at Râul Alb to cause a scandal. The # propaganda used the slogan: “We are taking our country back,” an adaptation of the slogan “We are not selling our country” from the ’90s. In those years, the slogan proved to be a smokescreen for masking the plunder that followed at the national level. In our case, the new slogan, designed to unleash “civic terrorism,” achieved its purpose. As a result of these mobilizations, several teams of provocateurs were formed who came repeatedly to Râul Alb to harass us systematically. The working methods are similar to those usually practiced by the members of the #Rezist group: each time they film their “target” while provoking it, after which they post on social networks edited little films, doctored in such a way as to put their victim in an unfavorable light before public opinion. Subsequently, the lies of the young “environmentalists” were dismantled. The invoked aggressions and the massive cuttings were just some flimsy fabrications of evidence. Following an investigation, it was proven that there were no “illegal deforestations.” The banks of the river were not “dynamited.” As for the “petty interests,” they proved to be genuine, only that they belong to the “environmental” mercenaries who triggered the attack at Râul Alb. The logs that the complainants spoke of were harvested legally by the local joint-ownership associations and by the town hall, on the basis of the exploitation documents authorized for harvesting
(doc.4). The apocalyptic messages could not be confirmed with evidence, but the bait had been thrown and it rolled on in the public sphere.
The same modus operandi was used in the case of the attempted murder at Râul Alb, on 24 May 2015: they filmed us from three locations, even before we reached the site, and when I stopped the ATV, one of the agitators – by the name of Leordean Vasile – punched the windshield and began to provoke us to violence, without any logical explanation at those moments. This fact results from the very recordings of the so-called environmentalists.
Next episodes
Episode 5 – In the Village They Called Me “the Wanderer”
Those who know me know that I have always been an active man. In the village they called me “the Wanderer” because I took advantage of every day spent at Coroiești to walk along the valley of Râul Alb.
Episode 6 – #Rezist Does Not Resist
The media manipulation campaign continued with a new raid at Râul Alb, on 21 May 2015. On the route of the investments, I met Dejeu Călin, Păvaloiu Dan (from TVR 2 Cluj), and two more people with video cameras.
Episode 7 – NGO Members Hunting for the Sensational
It was a Sunday, a week before the attack at Râul Alb. In the area of the construction site at Coroieşti, Sălăşan Luca and his girlfriend – Leordean Sara – made their appearance.