If you think that something changed on Belina, the Romanian captured island, since Liviu Dragnea got to jail, you are mistaken. As you will see in the third episode of our documentary series ❝Belina❞ – Lawless Island.

While the island changed hands between the National Administration of Waters and the county council of Teleorman and back, the contract with Tel Drum, the company privatised with the signature of Liviu Dragnea, then county council president, and allegedly controlled by him and his men, is ongoing, totally undisturbed. The car in which Liviu Dragnea used to go hunting is touring the island and the laws of the land still did not reach the island. Orgies, people trafficking, illegal logging, construction of dams without authorisation, the list of lawlessness is long.

Meanwhile, at Bucharest Municipal Court, the Belina trial is going ahead, in some sessions with up to five witnesses, many of them public servants, from such institutions as the Ministries of Finance, Justice and Environment or the National Administration of Waters They come one after the other to make their declarations in front of the judge, lying, whispering their lies and going as far as to the point where even the fact that Belina is an island and that the Danube is flowing become matters of debate.

As a local is saying in our documentary series: ”They are afraid like they are of God – but maybe of God they are not afraid actually”.

Even if Dragnea’s name is rarely pronounced in the court room, the fear of Dragnea and his people can be felt in the ait at almost any session of the Belina Trial.

❝Belina❞ – Episodul 1 – Treasure Island
❝Belina❞ – Episodul 2 – Captured Island
❝Belina❞ – Episodul 3 – Lawless Island
❝Belina❞ – Episodul 4 – Disappearing Island: coming soon.

On the 23rd of August 2018, Romanian prime-minister Viorica Dăncilă orders the hydroelectric project generically named “Turnu Magurele-Nicopole” to be included in the list of strategic projects. What is kept hidden behind the generic name is the exact place where the hydroelectric dame is to be constructed, Belina Island on the Danube.

That same day, 23rd Auguts 2018, is prime-minister Dăncilă’s first public appearance after the biggest protest against her government. At 10th of August 2018, hundreds of thousands of Romanians had taken to the streets to protest against the government headed by Viorica Dăncilă, meeting brutal and unprecedented agression of the authorities. The two following weeks she had spent in hiding, without making any declaration.
Viorica Dăncilă later declared that she had taken a spontaneous vacation.

In her first appearance after these events, Viorica Dăncilă suggestst that what happened on the 10th of August was an unsuccesful coup d’etat against her government, and announces a gigantic hydroelectric plant on Belina Island.

Since 2011 Belina Island has been captured by the company “Tel Drum”, a company privatised and controlled through middle-men by Liviu Dragnea, , former president of the Romanian Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Chamber of Deputies, and current inmate of Rahova prison in Bucharest.

Officially Tel Drum and the Romanian national administration of waters closed a lease of the water surface to the former in the scope of “fisheries development”. The company Tel Drum, however, went on to cut the Pavel arm of the Danube (which is separating Belina Island from the Romanian shore) with dams and to put in place barricades and security guards thus cutting off the island from its surroundings and denying entry to locals, including local fishermen. The barriers and security guards remain in place to this day.

The story however begins much earlier, with the promise of a pharaonic development made by the Romanian dictator Ceaușescu in the 1970s. The promise, after 50 years, has not been fulfilled but neither has it died away as it is used every time the local or national administration seems the need for announcing something grandiose.

From Ceaușescu to Dagnea, Crin Antonescu, Ponta and today’s prime minister Viorica Dăncilă almost every Romanian leader of the last 30 years has announced great projects for Belina Island, up until the utopian promise has become an electoral lie, recycled and recycled again.

In second episode of our mini-series we invite you on a journey in time, starting 50 years ago when politics entered the island. A story about how to capture an entire island on the Danube, step by step.

Belina is a metaphor for Romania. Once we understood what has happened with this piece of land in the last years, we understood better what is happening to nowadays’ Romania.

On this island on the shore of the Danube River, one can easily see what it means when some people put themselves above the law, and the power of state institutions put in place to defend the rights of citizens weighs no more than some useless declarations on paper.

In the last two years, while documenting protests in defense of the rule of law in Bucharest – where people started to talk about the imminent installation of a dictatorship – we have made regular trips to Teleorman county and seized all chances to enter Belina, the treasure island.

On Belina, laws and rights exist only in theory. There is no transparency of political decisions, crimes happen behind illegal barriers, law enforcement officers work only for those in power, and if these people ever have to face a judge, their court proceedings are delayed, laws are changed in their benefit and the injustice to citizens is never made up for.

The story on the ground, at Belina, has always the same main character: Liviu Dragnea, the strongman behind the Romanian government.

Corruption in Teleorman, and even more so on Belina is not an abstract thing at all, as here it means that someone, from one day to the other, takes the fish from your table and denies you access to the island which for generations had been the local fishing ground and until 2011 the economic backbone of tens of industrial fishermen in the region. And their families of course.

Nowhere in the whole world does the presumption of innocence exist for politicians in the eye of the public. After having listened to testimonies of the people in Teleorman, and after having been numeroous times on Belina, we can tell that Liviu Dragnea is guilty.

For 20 years, Dragnea has been in the highest public offices in that county. And he has claimed to work for the benefit of the community. In fact, though, what he left behind behind is a place where even the notion of common good is unknown to the local administration. Above all, Dragnea makes himself guilty of the poverty of the people he has ruled for oh-so many years.

The day will come when a judge will have to pronounce how many laws Dragnea broke in order to put his hands on former state-owned properties, benefit from former state-owned companies and take control over an island, a county and an entire country.

We are no judges, we cannot give a verdict and state here and now which are the laws that Dragnea broke or how many his people changed for their own benefit. But what we can do is take you on a journey where all you need to take with you is common sense, so you can judge for yourself.

In our film, a road movie from Teleorman, you can see why there are all the reasons to be afraid of the teleormanisation of Romania. On the roads of Teleorman, paved for millions by Tel Drum, you encounter beautifully situated villages, in which half of the houses are empty, left behind by their inhabitants who went on with their lives in other counties of Romania or abroad, because, as those who still resist say, the only one you can work for in Teleorman is Liviu Dragnea, impersonated either by Tel Drum, the construction company he controls, or by the public administration. Dragnea and his people virtually own Teleorman, here there is nothing changing from one hand to the other, without a third hand opening in between, firmly asking for the share.