On 18 February 1990, ITN's crew in Romania captured the historic moment Romanian civilians – including a large number of miners from the Jiu Valley – stormed the foreign ministry in Bucharest's Victoria Square, an event also known as the February 1990 Mineriad.
The February Mineriad occurred less than two months after Romania's long-time ruler, Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, and his wife, Elena Ceaușescu, were executed on Christmas Day 1989 – the culmination of the most violent and spectacular of the anti-Communist revolutions that swept across Eastern Europe that year. As this footage makes stark, social unrest and civil disturbances did not stop once the Communist regime had fallen. The Ceaușescu government was swiftly replaced by the National Salvation Front (FSN), led by former Communist official Ion Iliescu. At the same time, Romania's Jiu Valley miners became a prominent force in street-level politics in post-Ceaușescu Romania, the term mineriad being given to the numerous large-scale, violent protests that saw the miners clash with the FSN. The February Mineriad was one such clash, which saw protesters attack the building being used as the FSN's headquarters in dramatic fashion.
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