Eyewitness to total tyranny – and how 1 man detonated it

[ U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf handing President Reagan a copy of "Red Horizons" in the Oval Office ]

By Darnelle Mason
Editor’s note: As publishers of the much-talked-about new book “Disinformation” and the film documentary of the same name, WND has described how Ion Mihai Pacepa, the book’s co-author and focus of the movie, was the highest-ranking spy chief ever to defect from the Soviet bloc. WND has also described his huge role in liberating communist Romania from the unspeakably evil dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, whom he once served as top adviser. WND has even attempted to describe how abominable conditions were at that time. But now, Darnelle Mason, founder of a Christian ministry in Romania and eyewitness to life in that nation under Ceausescu – and to its liberation thanks to Pacepa – provides a vivid, accurate and chilling picture of life in that nation before Pacepa lit the fuse that ended the tyranny …

“Does America know what is happening to us?” When will America come to help us?”
Romanians asked these words of me countless times during Nicolae Ceausescu’s accelerated campaign of misery and terror upon his own people during the 1980s.
Why would a cultured European country that has contributed to the world its own unique achievements in science, literature, music, architecture, art and education be reduced to asking for help?
It is very difficult to explain to the Western world the oppression of Romania during this decade. I liken being there to being in “The Twilight Zone,” but for Romanians, the horrors of their deprivation and terror was an everyday reality.
Romania functioned like a besieged country during wartime occupied by a foreign enemy. Food and electricity were rationed. In the cities, Romanians waited in long lines for bread and gasoline, and meat was a rare commodity. The only “meat” I witnessed in stores was chicken feet. All news from the West was banned – this meant books, newspapers, magazines and radio broadcasts. Forget about a variety of television programming; there were only two or three channels, which most of the time broadcast the “wooden” speech and applause of Ceausescu and his minions.

It was illegal for Romanians to host Westerners in their home, and it was expected that all meetings and conversations with Westerners would be reported to their local Security Police. Phones were tapped, mail was censored and anything that had to do with Western international contact was heavily monitored and scrutinized. Romanians were not allowed to stray from their own city without prior permission from local authorities, and mobile militia roadblocks made sure of that!
The Romanian government made surreal maps for its citizens – curiously absent were the names of border towns and the international countries that surrounded them. This was, of course, to discourage Romanians from discovering where they might escape.
The ever-present and enormously pervasive Security police – the Securitate – swiftly punished any mode of dissent. Just like the German Gestapo, they utilized a gross proportion of the citizenry to inform on each other in order to obtain an extra ration of food or a prized trip to see a doctor and actually get medicine. Or if you became a valuable informant, you just may be able to travel to another Soviet bloc country, or even overseas.

In contrast, if you were a brave Romanian priest, pastor, poet, writer, teacher, scientist, farmer, student, etc., and had the courageous conviction to stand up and resist your government’s putrid assault on the Romanian mind, body and soul, you were promptly dealt with. Initially, you would be placed under surveillance, then moved to the illustrious prison system and be tortured and beaten, or just mysteriously disappear, or worst of all, be found dead – by natural causes, of course.
It is hard for Westerners to imagine what this type of atmosphere does to your humanity.
It creates great anguish and desperation. Romanians were hungry for freedom, and rightly so, being systematically suffocated by their own government.
But it also creates courage and determination. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Romanians found life too deplorable and risked everything to cross over their border to find freedom for themselves and their families. Guards with machine guns, dogs, barbed wire and trip wire with underground explosives manned the Romanian borders. Many Romanians lost limbs and were caught and imprisoned, tortured or killed as they were labeled with the ultimate evil label that existed in socialist Romania – “a traitor.” 


If a Romanian decided to escape by swimming the Danube River, there were boats waiting to harpoon them. Imagine the idea of killing human beings like sea urchins! As people living in the relative ease of a free society, we have to ask ourselves: “How bad is it when people are willing to crawl on their belly in a field crisscrossed with explosives, or swim against the currents to find a better life?”
Yes, life in Romania was that bad. It was that dark.
It was in this seemingly hopeless Romanian landscape that a bright light appeared in the form of an exposé called “Red Horizons: The True Story of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu’s Crimes, Lifestyle, and Corruption,” written by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa. In 1988, through “Red Horizons,” Pacepa opened the lid on the Ceausescu regime and revealed all the filth of its deception and the misery it created.

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