June 1990 Mineriad

The June 1990 Mineriad was the suppression of an anti-National Salvation Front (FSN) sit-in protests 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. This event occurred several weeks after the FSN achieved a landslide victory in the May 1990 general election, the first elections after the fall of the Ceauşescu regime. Many of the miners, factory workers, and other anti-protester groups, fought with the protesters and bystanders. The violence resulted in some deaths and many injuries on both sides of the confrontations. Official figures listed seven fatalities and hundreds of injured, although media estimates of the number killed and injured varied widely and were often much higher.

The initial enthusiasm after the Romanian Revolution of 1989 was tempered in January 1990, after the National Salvation Front (Frontul Salvării Naționale, FSN), an organization that emerged as the leader during the anti-Ceaușescu revolution, decided to run as a party in the elections it was set to organize. Further discontent was brought by fact that many of the FSN leaders, including its president, Ion Iliescu, were former members of the Romanian Communist Party. At the moment of the 1989 Revolution, the Communist Party had a membership of 4 million in a population of 22 million.

The newly founded parties that opposed the FSN organised, beginning with April, large electoral meetings in University Square. Students and professors at the University of Bucharest also joined in the protests. One of their most vocal demands was the voting into law of the eighth demand of the Proclamation of Timişoara, which stated that communists should be prevented from holding official functions.