It is our duty to honour memory of all those who suffered behind Iron Curtain (Senate head)

The historic year 1989 is the year in which the peoples in Central and Eastern Europe took the step towards the free world, Senate Chairman Calin Popescu-Tariceanu told a solemn sitting of the Parliament on Wednesday to mark the 25th anniversary of the December 1989 Revolution that toppled the communist rule.

He praised the memory of all those who suffered behind the Iron Curtain.

'The historic 1989 year has broader, European-breadth significance. That was the year when the Iron Curtain was crushed, the year when all the peoples in Central and Eastern Europe, which for more than four decades had been put to oppression and totalitarian darkness took the step towards the free and prosperous world', Tariceanu said.

'It is our duty, at this time of anniversary to praise the memory of all the heroes and all the peoples who suffered behind the Iron Curtain. The Romanian people lived one of the toughest communist totalitarian regimes. The policy of the totalitarian regime in Romania violently eliminated the political, intellectual, economic elites of inter-war Romania', the Senate head stressed.

A quarter of a century since the fall of communism, he argued in favour of a model of society that should cultivate freedom and in which the personal initiative 'be the value assumed at the highest degree in the society'.

'I think we can find the best solutions so that school and all the other forms of education should lay greater emphasis on training citizens capable of having initiative and courage, who should take Romania further', said Tariceanu.AGERPRES