Racism, Police Brutality and Online Hate: Why Romania’s Roma are no nearer their Black Lives Matter Moment

"I don't know," the man wails.

"Then who was it?" comes the question.

The unsteady video offers a blurred glimpse of two uniformed officers swinging their arms at the man's legs. A third officer, in plainclothes, rests a shoe on the man's neck. A series of rapid thwacks fills the soundtrack, punctuated by the man's shrieks.

The lawsuit eventually brought against the police would accuse them of assaulting eight men that day. One of the men is said to have been beaten with a metal rod on the soles of his feet - a torture technique, known as bastinado or falaka, historically used to hurt and humiliate prisoners in authoritarian or colonial regimes.

In the manner of police brutality videos worldwide, the footage of the incident was shared on social media networks and picked up by the mainstream press. However, it did not generate popular hashtags or street protests. Online expressions of outrage were accompanied, and even outnumbered, by comments expressing support for the police.

"These guys need to be beaten, it's the only thing they understand," said one commenter on the Facebook page of a news website. "The cops should not be punished, they were doing their jobs," said another. "The investigators… should reward the police chief," concluded yet another.

The officers in the video belong to the Romanian police force, and the men they are accused of assaulting belong to the country's impoverished Roma minority.

Victimised for centuries by society and the state, through a history spanning enslavement and ethnic cleansing, the Roma are - like everyone else in Romania - embracing smartphones and social media. But these new technologies have proven to be a double-edged sword against a police force notorious for acting with...