Bucharest Domestic Service: Ceausescu's address on the Timisoara events, FBIS Daily Report, 21 December 1989

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Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

66 ROMANIA FBIS-EEU-89-244
21 December 1989
Ceausescu Address to Nation 20 Dec
AU2012175889 Bucharest Domestic Service in Romanian 1700 GMT 20 Dec 89
[Speech by President Nicolae Ceausescu on Romanian radio and television stations in Bucharest on 20 December--live]
[Text] Comrades and friends, citizens of the Socialist Republic of Romania: This evening I am addressing all the people of our socialist homeland in connection with the serious events which took place in the past few days in Timisoara.
On 16 and 17 December--under the pretext of preventing the application of a legal judicial sentence--a few groups of hooligan elements organized a number of demonstrations and incidents, attacking some state institutions and destroying and looting a number of buildings, stores, and public buildings. On 17 December, they intensified their activity against state and party institutions, including some military units.
[...]
The population in Timisoara is familiar with and has seen all these fascist destructions. Despite insistences for two days by the political, party, and people's councils bodies--by the enterprise leaderships and the order bodies--these groups continued and intensified their destructive activity of attacking institutions and stores--including military units.
[...]
On the basis of data available so far, one can say with full conviction that these actions of a terrorist nature were organized and unleashed in close connection with reactionary, imperialist, irredentist, chauvinist circles, and foreign espionage services in various foreign countries.
The purpose of these provocative antinational actions was to provoke disorder in order to destabilize the political and economic situation, to create conditions for Romania's territorial dismemberment, and to destroy the independence and sovereignty of our socialist homeland.
It was no coincidence that, during these antinational and terrorist actions, the radio stations in Budapest and in other countries had already launched a shameful campaign of slander and lies against our country.
The purpose--I repeat, according to data available so far and on the basis of the position held by revisionist, revanchist, and imperialist circles in various countries--was to destroy Romania's independence and integrity, to stop the progress of socialist development, and to make Romania turn back to foreign domination, and to eliminate our homeland's socialist development.
[...]

English translation (machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader)

The page is FBIS's English translation of a Romanian-language address broadcast live by Bucharest Domestic Service (radio and television). The printed text is given as translated by FBIS; the bracketed [corrects himself] is the FBIS monitor's note.

Transcribed from the page image, with the evident word read where a letter is blotted on the scan (e.g. 'including', 'calm'). '[...]' marks paragraphs on the page that are omitted here for length (the schema caps this field at 4,000 characters); they are visible in the hosted image. The page itself breaks off mid-sentence after 'Why those imperialist'.