08/11/2011
Today, 7 November 2011, November, activists from the Save Rosia Montana Campaign (www.rosiamontana.org), occupied the building of the former Continental Hotel, located in Union Square, Cluj-Napoca.

The purpose of this protest is to stop the lies and misinformation about the project of Rosia Montana Gold Corporation, a gold mining project involving the use of cyanide. Rosia Montana Gold Corporation is a Canadian majority own company, which plans to open the largest open cast gold mine in Europe, by destroying Rosia Montana village and the Apuseni Mountains in Transylvania, Romania. Lies and misinformation were propagated by the company throughout the entire Romanian media (video, audio and written), deliberately omitting the issues of the destruction of the Rosia Montana values ​​- human, ecological, environmental, heritage, historical and archaeological. Despite the opposition of civil society, academics and intellectuals, the Church and a part of the community of Rosia Montana, the Canadian company, together with the Romanian state, through its representatives in the Government and Presidency (including President Traian Basescu), continues to lobby and make propaganda in favour of this mining project.

This is why, we have chosen this radical way to protest, as this project is toxic not just for Rosia Montana, but for the entire society. If the Romanian state can steal the citizen's right to property in the name of a private project, then the entire democracy, as weak as it is, will be damaged. What or who can guarantee that, once the precedent from Rosia Montana will be created, the Romanian state will not evacuate you from your own homes, under the pretext of a project for investors that know which doors to “open”?...

We demand the President of Romania, Mr. Traian Basescu, to stop making propaganda for the Rosia Montana Gold Corporation project. A chief of state should represent the interests of his citizens, not a private mining company. The same thing we demand from the Ministries of the Environment, Culture and Economy.

We demand the TV channels, especially the public TV channel – TVR, to refuse the dirty publicity of RMGC, because the media has to be free and ethical and also because the opponents of the project never benefited from the same media exposure as RMGC. We also demand the authorities to respond to the complaints formulated against the misleading publicity of RMGC and to stop it. 

We kindly ask all the free citizens from all the social environments to support this protest, in any way they consider convenient.

This protest will be ended when our requests will be fulfilled. For more informations, please contact: +40726 594 867 (Mihnea Blidariu) or +40751 388 287 (Raluca Dan) and check Facebook [event] <<Ocupați "Conti", pre-ocupati Clujul.>>. Photo Galleries: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lumif9/sets/72157628072781260/ si http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4nR4JTZavM
 
Mihnea Blidariu (musician Luna Amară, writer)
Paul Socol (actor)
Bogdan Buta (engineer in telecommunications)

Raluca Dan (specialist in public relations)
Ana Bănică (architect)
Bianca (architect)