"the large numbers of securitate informers made organised dissent nearly impossible. the regime deliberately played on this sense that everyone was being watched." sounds exactly like you faggots always saying everyone's an fbi agent, especially when that person suggests the only valid solution. so it starts with a christian, which is exactly why they are target 1. "on 16 december 1989, the hungarian minority in timișoara held a public protest in response to an attempt by the government to evict hungarian reformed church pastor lászló tőkés. in july of that year, in an interview with hungarian television,25 tőkés had criticised the regime's systematisation policy26 and complained that romanians did not even know their human rights. the government then alleged that tőkés was inciting ethnic hatred. (sounds exactly what our governments would do.. waaa racist.) at the behest of the government, his bishop removed him from his post, thereby depriving him of the right to use the apartment to which he was entitled as a pastor, and assigned him to be a pastor in the countryside. for some time his parishioners gathered around his home to protect him from harassment and eviction. many passersby spontaneously joined in. as it became clear that the crowd would not disperse, the mayor, petre moț, made remarks suggesting that he had overturned the decision to evict tőkés. meanwhile, the crowd had grown impatient and, when moț declined to confirm his statement against the planned eviction in writing, the crowd started to chant anti-communist slogans. subsequently, police and securitate forces showed up at the scene. by 19:30 the protest had spread and the original cause became largely irrelevant. some of the protesters attempted to burn down the building that housed the district committee of the pcr. the securitate responded with tear gas and water cannons, while police beat up rioters and arrested many of them. around 21:00 the rioters withdrew. they regrouped eventually around the romanian orthodox cathedral and started a protest march around the city, but again they were confronted by the security forces. riots and protests resumed the following day, 17 december. the rioters broke into the district committee building and threw party documents, propaganda brochures, ceaușescu's writings, and other symbols of communist power out of windows.28 the military was sent in to control the riots, because the situation was too large for the securitate and conventional police to handle. the presence of the army in the streets was an ominous sign: it meant that they had received their orders from the highest level of the command chain, presumably from ceaușescu himself. the army failed to establish order and chaos ensued, including gunfire, fights, casualties, and burned cars. transportor amfibiu blindat (tab) armoured personnel carriers and tanks were called in.28 after 20:00, from piața libertății (liberty square) to the opera, there was wild shooting, including the area of decebal bridge, calea lipovei (lipovei avenue) and calea girocului (girocului avenue). tanks, trucks and tabs blocked the accesses into the city while helicopters hovered overhead. after midnight the protests calmed down. colonel-general ion coman, local party secretary ilie matei, and colonel-general ștefan gușă (chief of the romanian general staff) inspected the city. some areas looked like the aftermath of a war: destruction, rubble and blood.28 anyways i'm not going to continue to copy/paste the entire gigantic explanation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/romanian_revolution), the point is they revolted violently, which forced the govt to react violently, which only caused more people to join so that it grew out of control. there's a reason why china censors tiananmen square so much. govt violence is a false threat. they know what it so often leads to and they are terrified of igniting that chain reaction. i also had to laugh at this parallel, again exactly the same rhetoric our govts use in these situations: ceaușescu blamed the timișoara uprising on "fascist agitators".