Nicolae Ceausescu, says he will continue his legal battle against The Associated Press (AP) which accused him of having worked for the country’s feared secret service "Securitate".
"I would like to inform you that we will continue the legal case against AP -even at (the European Court of Human Rights in) Strasbourg if necessary," Reformed Bishop Laszlo Tokes told BosNewsLife in a statement on Tuesday, January 22.
Tokes lost a law suit initiated by him against the American news agency, after it was acquitted of libel and the Bucharest Tribunal overturned a fine for moral damages of about $22,000 in November.
MEDIA
Western observers seem to welcome the recent court ruling, after several attempts by officials in Romania to restrict the media in a country that has still little experience with an open society.
Although he admitted that the Securitate approached him during Communism, Tokes objected to alleged suggestions in an AP story of June 1998 that his acts were harmful to others. "I was forced to sign documents, but never volunteered to work for them," he told an BosNewsLife-reporter in an earlier interview.
But Romania’s former President Emil Constantinescu has said the Bishop "knows more than he wants to share." Tokes strongly denied those charges, and stressed he was never very active for the Securitate.
INSTRUMENT
The organization was seen as an important instrument of the Ceausescu regime to spy on and oppress its opponents, as well as christians and minorities, including ethnic Hungarians.
Tokes, who received international awards, is regarded as an important voice of Romania’s estimated two million ethnic Hungarians, who he believes still suffer under religious and other discrimination.
The Bishop has also expressed concern about "the return of former Communists" in the Romanian leadership, following recent local elections.
