L.A. Romanians Voice Support at Vigil

About 300 Romanian protesters held a candlelight vigil Sunday night outside Los Angeles City Hall, calling for military and economic support to revolutionary troops fighting the security forces of ousted dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

“We need support now, not a week later,” said Ionela Opran, a spokeswoman for the Romanian Faith and Freedom Coalition, which organized the protest.

Opran said the coalition was also calling for the Romanian Embassy in Washington to make public the files kept by Ceausescu’s security agents on Romanian dissidents in the United States. About 40,000 Romanians live in Southern California.

The demonstrators sang “Rise up Romanian,” a popular protest song, and the Romanian national anthem. Others raised clenched fists and chanted slogans in support of the Romanian army, which has played an important role in the overthrow of Ceausescu and continues to battle members of a secret police force loyal to the dictator.

Nicolae Suciu, 22, was one of several Romanian exiles at the demonstration who said they were prepared to travel to their homeland to fight as volunteers for the provisional revolutionary government.

“I’m a married man with two children,” he said. “But I’m ready to go fight with my friends, my brothers, my cousins, who are standing up to the killers in Ceausescu’s secret police.”

Suciu called on the United States to provide military support to the revolutionaries in Romania.

“We need someone to give us armaments, munitions, guns. We need M-1 rifles, bazookas, everything,” said Suciu, who wore a sash made of red, blue and yellow ribbons, the colors of the Romanian flag.

Suciu said he had spoken by telephone with eyewitnesses to the fighting in the provincial cities of Medias and Sibiu. But most of the protesters said they have had little or no contact with their relatives in Romania since the fighting began last week in the provincial town of Timisoara.

Bruno Nastasescu, 55, said the only information he had about the events in his native country was from television news reports, which showed scenes of fighting in Bucharest and the unearthing of mass graves in Timisoara.

“I am watching the television and I am crying all the time,” he said.