2015-06-05 10:41:00

Romania Removes People With Disabilities From Institutions


(Vatican Radio) Romania says thousands of people with disabilities living in special state institutions will gradually be moved into families, amid international concern over their treatment in the European Union member state.

Listen to the report by Stefan Bos: 

Labor Minister Rovana Plumb said some 17,000 people with disabilities would be taken out of often horrific circumstances to bring the country closer to European norms.

Over a period of five years they will be moved into families using some 700 million euro ($780 million) of European funds.

The minister says in a statement that her former-Communist nation wants in her words "send a clear message about ... implementing a modern European vision regarding people with disabilities," adding the state would stop financing the institutions.

She didn't provide further details such as what would happen to people with severe disabilities who require constant medical care.

MANY WAITING

Yet the announcement can't come soon enough for people who still suffer in institutions. Rights groups and investigative journalists have revealed that many people are often tied to beds, or face other physical abuse including beatings.

In Oradea, near the Hungarian border, a teacher could no longer watch the abuse 22-year old Bella had to endure throughout her life. “She was tied with her hands...She was put in the bath room for a month, and she slept there. things like this. She wasn't given to eat,” recalled her school teacher Oana Tuduce.

Abandoned at birth Bella was first taken to a child institution and later, at age 18, to a psychological facility. Soon after, Bella ended up with pneumonia in a hospital where she may have died, believes Tuduce, who decided to care for her. “She would have passed away because the state in which she was when I took her out it was very bad. These systems don't respect them as human beings,” Tuduce added.

In other undercover footage people with disabilities have cried for help, saying they suffer abuse if they “misbehave”. Critics say the government plan to bring them into families comes late. Already in 1989 after the collapse of communism more than 100,000 orphans were discovered living in often squalid conditions.

Many children were abandoned because of disabilities or the costs associated with raising them, and the general rejection by society.








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