Government of Romania Marian Munteanu Miron CozmaIon Iliescu The June 1990 Mineriad was the suppression of anti-National Salvation Front (FSN) rioting in Bucharest, Romania by the physical intervention of groups of industrial workers as well as coal miners from the Jiu Valley, brought to Bucharest by the government to counter the rising violence of the protesters.

Further discontent was brought by the fact[citation needed][dubious – discuss] that many of the FSN leaders, including its president, Ion Iliescu, were former members of the Romanian Communist Party.

[citation needed] The newly founded parties that opposed the FSN organised, beginning with April, large electoral meetings in University Square.

[citation needed] After Iliescu and the FSN won a landslide victory in the elections of May 20, 1990, the opposition parties decided to disband the meeting.

Their main demands were the adoption of point 8 of the Proclamation of Timișoara (no former members of the disbanded Romanian Communist Party in the new government), the political independence of TVR, and inquiries about the truth of the Revolution.

[citation needed] 05:00: Police attacked the Architecture Institute (Institutul de Arhitectură), surrounded the Square and built barricades out of vehicles.

[citation needed] 9:30: Demonstrators appeared around the barricade built between Colțea Hospital and "Luceafărul" Cinema and started chanting anti-government protests.

At the Architecture Faculty (Facultatea de Arhitectură) there was a press conference of students and hunger strikers who were attacked but had managed to evade arrest.

Protesters threw Molotov cocktails, started fires, conducted various acts of violence, destroyed documents and objects, and took people hostage.

[citation needed] In the early morning, coal miners from the Jiu Valley reached Bucharest on trains, along with their leader Miron Cozma.

[citation needed] A number of officials appeared at the Council of Ministers at Victory Square, and finally Iliescu showed up accompanied by representatives of the miners.

In his speech he accused the demonstrators of the University Square of being alcoholics, drug addicts, fascists (making reference to the Iron Guard "Legionnaires" of the World War II era), and bandits.

România Liberă and several publications of opposition political groups were not published in the interval of 15–18 June, as the typography workers refused to print the anti-government articles.

Viorel Ene, president of the Association of Victims of the Mineriads, asserted that "there are documents, testimonies of doctors, of people from Domnești and Străulești cemeteries.

"[2] The opposition newspaper România Liberă alleged that over 128 unidentified bodies were buried in a common grave in Străulești II cemetery, near Bucharest.

[3] A few weeks after the mineriad, several medical students conducted research in Străulești II cemetery, discovering two trenches with about 78 unmarked graves, which they claimed to contain victims of the events.

[5] The research, conducted by journalist Eugen Dichiseanu and members of the League of Students, including George Roncea, claimed to have found major irregularities, inaccuracies, negligencies, deficiencies of organization, but also attempts of default of evidence in the functioning of institutions involved in managing the situation of dead without identity: Police, Prosecution, Institute of Forensic Medicine (IFM), Bucharest City Hall.

The official government position on the foreign press opinion was expressed on 15 June 1990 by Prime Minister Petre Roman.

The perspective that the Bucharest-controlled media refused to provide their version of events was and continues to be widely held throughout the Jiu Valley.

Nicolae and warrant officer Corneliu Dumitrescu, guilty of ransacking the house of Ion Rațiu, a leading figure in the National Peasant Christian Democratic Party, during the miners’ incursion, and stealing $100,000.

"[1] In addition to accusations of having agents infiltrate and incite the opposition rally on 18 February 1990 and later directly participate in the June 1990 anti-opposition violence involving the Jiu Valley miners, there were also claims that during this period secret services were involved in distributing fake Legionary leaflets that claimed a fascist take-over in Romania was about to occur, and evidence that intelligence officials selectively released documents from Securitate archives in order to compromise opposition leaders.