Emergency official Arafat: Distortion was used of August 10 protest, other fatal incidents

Head of the Emergency Department (DSU) Raed Arafat said on Sunday evening that there were many distorted accounts of the August 10 street protest in Bucharest, as they were in the deadly fire at the Colectiv night club in 2015 and in the case of a medevac crash in Mts Apuseni.

"Facebook has become an extremely interesting zone: it is where a lot of information can be obtained, but many times its origin is not known, and simple-minded people do not know if such information comes from a credible source or not. There are many false accounts, that seem real, but one can easily see that an account was created 2-3 days previously, another account provides little information about its user, but it speaks a lot about a certain situation. This was not the first time that we were subjected to such misinformation and distortions that have an impact on the population. It also happened during the Colectiv [fire], even the Apuseni [accident] and in several other instances when we would face information that we had to counter," said Arafat.

He pointed out that in Colectiv case, one of the extremely serious information was that there were deceased people whose bodies had been hidden. "Whoever released such information knew very well why he did it. Only there was a name behind those who spread it: there they claimed that we were hiding dead bodies in bags and there were two journalists who spread this news. It took me 4-5 days to debunk that news, explaining that there was no one missing. Let there be clear that whoever did it did know that the news had an effect in Romania. Nobody would believe you if, say, you are in England and claim that the Police have hidden dead bodies in bags because they do not want to tell the truth. In Romania, there is the subconscious of the [December 1989] Revolution, because back then things were hidden; in the first place it happened in Timisoara, when no official confirmation was given that they were people killed, and so the average person would subconsciously think: well, they are doing it again," said Arafat.