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This Sunday, December 22, a thousand people gathered to commemorate the victims of the Romanian revolution, 30 years later. AFP Photos / Daniel Mihailescu

A thousand people commemorated this Sunday December 22 in Bucharest the victims of the Romanian revolution of December 1989 and hoped that the light will be shed on the bloody events that followed the fall of the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

In Bucharest, this December 22, the demonstrators observed a minute of silence in Revolution Square before letting fly hundreds of white balloons symbolizing according to the organizers " the soul of the 1,142 people killed " thirty years ago during of the Romanian Revolution .

Center-right president Klaus Iohannis, who joined the protesters, and several ministers, laid wreaths and candles in front of a monument to the victims: " We want to know the truth about December 1989, we we want the culprits to be tried and justice to be done, ”said Klaus Iohannis a few hours earlier, at the opening of an exhibition devoted to this uprising.

Crowd Shots

Until December 22, 1989, on the orders of Ceausescu , the army and the police had fired on the crowd. But most of the victims, more than 900, fell after the fall of the dictator, when a former communist apparatchik, Ion Iliescu, had just taken power.

The latter, elected president on three occasions (in 1990, 1992 and 2000) has been on trial since November for "crimes against humanity". He is accused of having orchestrated a " vast operation of diversion and disinformation " in order to " obtain legitimacy in the eyes of the people ".

►Also listen: Hello Europe - Romania: thirty years later, the difficult task of remembering around the Ceausescu

The anti-communist uprising began on December 15 in Timisoara, in the west of the country, before reaching Bucharest six days later. Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were arrested on December 22 and were shot after a summary trial on Christmas Day.

(With AFP)