Article by Narcis Drejan – published Tuesday, 05 August 2025 22:09 / Updated Tuesday, August 05, 2025 22:31
Moment of silence for Iliescu? And he plays Jiul with the miner? This is no longer a coincidence. It's a black state comedy.
Romania does not lack irony. But some miss more than others. For example, when the Romanian Football Federation announces a moment of silence in the Romanian Cup for the death of Ion Iliescu, and on the same day Jiul Petrosani – Minerul Lupeni is played, it is clear that history is not only repeated, but also makes fun of us.
Let's put the Golan's anthem at the match
What is commemorating here, actually? The man who called the miners in Bucharest with special trains? The one who put the stick in their hand and gave the hunting of students, journalists, women, intellectuals?
The one who led the country with the frozen smile of a Soviet “Apparatchik”, convinced that democracy is good, but only when he is silent and stays in the corner?
We beat history game
Iliescu does not deserve moments of silence. Iliescu deserves pages of manual, whole chapters of historical guilt and posthumous judgments. And if we still want symbolism, what symbolism more cynical than a match between two teams in the Jiu Valley, exactly the day after the country stops, the faces, out of respect for the one who turned the miners into a repression force?
Jiul Petrosani and Miner Lupeni, Two teams of communities that have experienced exploitation, propaganda, silence and death. True miners have never been to Iliescu. They were his victims. And today, in 2025, we pretend that we do not see the irony: that we keep a moment of silence because we were told to do it, while the memory of the beaten in '90 and '91 is deleted by dust, ignorance and fear.
FRF, alooooo, do you sleep? Patraulea, rose?
If there is a place where the moment of retreat should not be held, that place is exactly Petrosani. Because there people know. Because there, silence is not a retreat, but a revolt. There, when you shut up for Iliescu, you spit your own past.
But FRF is not there for history. It's there for the regulation. For gestures. For the image. For the tick.
And so, deep Romania will have a moment of silence on Wednesday because it is required. At a match between two teams named after miners. In a country, until recently, by a man who used the miners as a stick against the people.
It's more than ironic. It's a black glove slap over the cheek of those who still believe that memory is not a bad joke.
