To: The President of the Romanian Senate, Mr. Mircea Geoana
The Permanent Office of the Romanian Senate
Mr. Cristian Radulescu, leader of the Democratic Liberal Party Group
Notification regarding the irresponsible and xenophobic attitude of Senator Iulian Urban
ActiveWatch – Media Monitoring Agency and Policy Centre for Roma and Minorities would like to
draw to your attention the irresponsible and xenophobic attitude of senator Iulian Urban.
On the 25th of July 2011, Iulian Urban published on his personal blog the article ”Not Breivik
committed the attack, but the current leaders who lead the EU”. The article sets forth a pseudoexplanation for the attack commited by Anders Behring Breivik on the 22nd of July 2011, arguing that
the change in attitude of the European political leaders towards immigration and multiculturalism,
especially in what regards the muslims, had a great deal of fault in the events. Quoting the article:
 “France and Italy have created national a hysteria against gypsies, France has banned the burka,
in Hungary anti-gypsy detachments are marching the streets, which means that the European
politicians are, knowingly or unknowingly pushing the European politics towards a form of
extremism which transforms Europe in the gunpowder barrel of the planet. And even
considering this, with all this pressure coming from politicians, of all the 550 million native
citizens of the EU, only one was found to commit an act of great and useless cruelty. This says a
lot about the unbelievable tolerance and patience (as of yet) of the Europeans”
 “In this extremist chaos it is amazing that only one European pulled the trigger in order to
express the frustration towards the indifference and hypocrisy of the European politicians in
what concerns the islamisation and illegal immigration which put in peril (according to the
public speech) the entire European culture and civilisation.”
 “[...] What this individual did was extreme, but almost everybody is fed up of the muslims, who
what to affirm themselves everywhere, religiously speaking. Another problem is that the
muslims are living on social assistance, don't want to work and are always coming with the
excuse that they come from war countries. Another problem is that they don't respect the
citizens of the country they are inhabiting, don't know their customs or their language or
traditions. Does this sound familiar? I'll remind you of the reasons for the extradition of the
Romanian gypsies from France in 2010!!!”
 “Multiculturalism is good only when similar cultures come toghether, you can't mix up people
from the national library with the ones in a Ferentari [an ill-named district of Buchares,
translator's note] ” pub or in a prison, at an math olympic's party you can bring biology
olympics, but not the bullies of the hood”
 “It's said that the EU does not clearly name this problem and does not clearly set which is the
difference between freedom of expression and the muslim colonisation that is taking place in
the EU”
 “Multiculturalism had been force-fed to us and in great quantities and now certain crazies are
reacting violently”
Subject to pressures coming from the media, the senator clarified on the TV station Realitatea TV the
points made in the article posted on his blog. This statements were later covered by the media and also
appeared on his personal blog. During his intervention, senator Urban declared that “as long as Europe
named itself the temple of political correctness, as long as we have been taught to tolerate the muslims,
the chinese, the jews, the roma people, with their religions and habits, we cannot change our minds,
because if we do this, we will be provoking these people. If we set the Europeans against these
immigrants, we will find ourselves in a Europe that would become a gunpowder barrel”.
Nevertheless, the senator did not draw back his opinion that the European Politicians are partly
responsible for the anti-immigration manifestations and claimed that he does not intend to remove the
article from his blog.
We are considering that the article ”Not Breivik committed the attack, but the current leaders who lead
the EU” is a profoundly irresponsible one and that it brings considerable prejudice to Romania's image,
considering that a Romanian politician, member of the ruling party and part of a decisional institution
of the Romanian state, has publicly stated that European leaders and policy makers barry the
responsibility for the actions of a single individual, member of right-wing extremist formations.
We are also considering the following statements to be extremely xenophobic: “muslims are living on
social assistance, don't want to work and are always coming with the excuse that they come from war
countries”, “Multiculturalism is good only when similar cultures come together, you can't mix up
people from the national library with the ones in a Ferentari [an ill-named district of Bucharest,
translator's note] ” pub or in a prison, at an math olympic's party you can bring biology olympics, but
not the bullies of the hood”, “It's said that the EU does not clearly name this problem and does not
clearly set which is the difference between freedom of expression and the muslim colonisation that is
taking place in the EU”. Such statements have the potential to strengthen the rejection that is felt by a
major part* of the Romanian population towards muslims, which brings us away from the ideals of
tolerance and inclusion formulated in the European Union.
We would also like to draw the attention on the fact that leaders of the European Parliament have
already started to comment the public statements of senator Iulian Urban. Hannes Swoboda, the vicepresident of the socialists and democrats group in the European Parliament stated for the RFI that the
declarations are outrageous, and that “what we need to do now is to draw a clear line between criticism
and opinions – of which I can or cannot agree and which are accepted in any democracy – and such
statements which are beyond any democratic tolerance.”
ActiveWatch – Media Monitoring Agency and Policy Centre for Roma and Minorities are therefore
requesting the behaviour of senator Iulian Urban to be analysed and the corresponding sanctions to be
enforced in order to minimise the chances of similar “slipsides” from appearing.
We shall present a list of persons supporting this notification in 10 days time.
Yours sincerely,
Mircea Toma
President – ActiveWatch
Valeriu Nicolae
President – Policy Center for Roma and Minorities
* “The Civil and Political Involvement of Youths”, study made by the Soros Foundation Romania, published in april 2011,
according to which 42% of the Romanian youths would not want to interact with muslims