Decision in the CLUJ trial: accusations rejected as insubstantial
Gregorian Bivolaru and 19 other yoga teachers and practitioners acquitted
The Court of Cluj published today, 11th of January 2015, the verdict in the case in which Gregorian Bivolaru and 19 teachers and yoga practitioners were accused of human trafficking. This file was “fabricated” by political order against some teachers and yoga practitioners who were part of the MISA yoga school; the file speculates and distorts the traditional yogi practice known as KARMA YOGA by associating it with the name of “human trafficking”.
The so-called “victims” in this file demanded to be paid huge amounts of money because, as they said, they were “trafficked”. All the accusations formulated by the civil parties were rejected as unfounded. The other charges were rejected because they are referring to facts that were prescribed or that did not constitute a crime at that time.
In order to justify this absurd case file, the prosecutors built up an entire edifice of deceitful accusations, trying to prove that the yogis constituted an “organized criminal group”. Since the human trafficking accusations were deemed as insubstantial, it is obvious that there is no crime and no crime group, even if the court rejected these accusations due to the fact that they did not constitute crimes at the time of the accusation.
It is significant that the instance pointed out the fact that some of the evidence was obtained illegally – respectively, a few private telephone conversations were intercepted under the pretext of defending national security.
The Cluj verdict is a natural verdict, considering the fact that the whole file was built on speculations, distorted information and lies, in order to justify the diverse repressive actions of the authorities against yoga practitioners in Romania.
The file was drawn up by the Prosecutor’s Office after the armed searches that took place on the 18th of March, 2004, when a total of 16 homes of yoga practitioners were searched – over 300 gendarmes, prosecutors and members of the special forces took part in this operation and at that time, it was considered as “the greatest action of the Romanian authorities against drug trafficking, weapon trafficking and prostitution.”
The Cluj verdict shows that all the accusations of the authorities against the yogis, accusations that were repeatedly exaggerated by the media, are insubstantial. We hope that at least now, there will be journalists to objectively and lucidly analyze the MISA case and to disclose the abuse of the authorities against yoga practitioners.
MISA Press Release
February 2015
