Video of Romanian Police Beating Roma Causes Outrage

Video footage of Romanian policemen shouting at a group of rounded-up Roma men lying on the ground while an officer repeatedly beats one of them has shocked human rights activists in the country. The newspaper Libertatea published the amateur 40-second video on Thursday night.

The short video was recorded in a the yard of a private house in the town of Bolintin Vale in Giurgiu province in southern Romania. The man being beaten can be heard screaming in pain as officers shout "Stay at home!" and use language sprinkled with insults and vulgar expressions.

The man in plain clothes shown beating the man lying face down is allegedly the police chief of Bolintin Vale. He has already been removed from this post and a criminal investigation against him has been opened.

The images, which Libertatea called typical of a country ruled by a "military junta", have sparked outrage among human rights activists and civil society organisations in Romania.

Two Roma rights NGOs, Romani CRISS and the Civic Union of the Young Romanis, urged President Klaus Iohannis to fire Interior Minister Marcel Vela and his cabinet chief Traian Berbeceanu, who recently said that the police "should meet violence with violence".

The two NGOs accuse Vela and his subordinate of "encouraging the police to commit acts of violence against their own citizens" and list a series of alleged police abuses that have occurred since President Iohannis declared a state of emergency on March 16.

Among those incidents, the NGOs mention alleged beatings and violations of private homes during police interventions in several towns and cities.

Romanian police have been accused of abusing the curbs on the movement of people imposed under the state of...