During 1998, these provisions were used to punish journalists who exposed corruption among public officials. On March 13, three journalists from the Buzau newspaper Opinia received one year in prison for printing accusations that a former prosecutor's mother rented her house for use by those involved in an illegal pyramid scheme. Scultelnicu, Stangu, Florescu, and Burlacu all worked for Monitorul , a regional independent daily operating in northeastern Romania. The RHC also reports numerous instances of the unlawful use of firearms by police. The military prosecutor has jurisdiction over such complaints, but was reluctant to indict police officers for such abuses.
Romanian law provides no other remedy for victims of police abuse.
Roma are disproportionately the victims of police misconduct. Conditions in detention facilities continued to fall well below international standards in 1998. Women also faced police harassment and discrimination in Romania. In May, police in Braila summoned women suspected of traveling to Turkey to engage in sex work to the police station and threatened them with arrest and public exposure of their activities in Turkey if they refused to surrender their passports. Police then confiscated their passports, preventing the women from leaving the country.