‘Most-Favored’ Romania Status

Your editorial on “Right Is Wrong on Romania” (July 25) asserts that withdrawal of most-favored-nation-status for that country will not make it a “nice capitalist democracy”. Quite so. Nevertheless, most-favored-nation status should be rescinded.

The two other East European nations which enjoy this preferred status are--contrasted with Romania--liberal democracies. During the past few years the Hungarian and Yugoslav regimes have become less oppressive; in Romania “over the past two years physical brutalities, imprisonments, house searches and beatings against minority rights advocates have markedly increased”. This quote is taken from an article (6/14) in the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times wrote June 12 about Romania’s record of suppressing religion, demolishing churches, imprisonment and murder of church leaders and the persecution of minorities, especially Hungarians.

Your editorial writers undoubtedly read such publications as the Wall Street Journal and the N.Y. Times. Therefore, they must be aware that challenges to Romania’s most-favored-nation-status are not just “illusions of the far right” as your editorial alleges.

The Los Angeles Times did not condone human rights violations in El Salvador, which were committed with the tacit approval of that country’s government. The atrocities perpetrated by the Ceausescu government in Romania receive less publicity but are no less deplorable. The Times has not done its homework.

STEPHEN W. MATICA

Burbank