Are racism and hate crimes on the rise in Romania? An attack in August in Bucharest sent a dangerous message. Ismail Hossain, a food delivery worker from Bangladesh, was brutally attacked.
"Go back to your country, you s**t!, you son of a bitch!", the attacker shouts in the video he filmed himself. "But why?", the attacked worker asks. "Because you are an invader!", is the answer.
Rising cases of xenophobia
The incident has drawn attention to the growing number of cases of racism and xenophobia. NGO reports on the experiences of migrants working in the country paint a disturbing picture of the hardships faced by foreigners in Romania.
"I didn't know this man", says Hossain. "I asked him: "Why are you attacking me, why are you hitting me?" And he said: "Go back to your country".
The attacker was arrested, and the incident could have ended tragically, but Andrei Gianu, a police officer who was nearby at the time, but not on duty, decided to intervene. "The only thing I thought about was protecting the citizen who was attacked. "No matter the nationality of the person who is threatened, we react in the same way," the police officer said.
Just days before the attack, a lawmaker from the far-right "Alliance for the Unity of Romanians" called on people on social media to refuse deliveries unless they are carried out by Romanian citizens.
"What extremist parties do, just like in the 1930s and 1940s, is to fuel people's disillusionment and hatred," said Alin Banu, who heads the non-governmental organization "Roma for Democracy." In the first half of the 20th century, fascist movements in Romania gained strength.
"They don't treat us like people"
DW spoke to Omtajur Rahman, another Bangladeshi man who delivers food in Bucharest. Like thousands of other Asians, he also came to Romania in search of a better life. "I haven't encountered such problems so far", he says, but Hossain's case definitely worries him. "When I go to get food from restaurants, they don't treat us like people. If he's Romanian, they treat him kindly and arrange the delivery very quickly", he adds.
Georgiana Badescu is the author of a study titled "A Day in the Life of a Migrant Worker". "We conducted interviews with 12 migrants who work. There was not one of them who was not a victim of discrimination. A Pakistani who delivers food tells how a Romanian customer called him and told him that if the courier was Muslim, it was best to leave the food on the stairs because he did not want to touch Muslims,“ she tells DW.
Alin Banu from “Roma for Democracy“ says that such cases worry him. “But the peak has not yet been reached... In a month or two we will see how everyone - both unions and the majority of people - will take to the streets. We will see violence, we will see that Romania is in total crisis,” he says.
"Romanians know what it's like to work in a foreign country"
In 2024, about 24% of Romanians, or nearly 4.6 million people, had lived or worked abroad. Cristian Ganea, president of the Association of Foreign Workers in Romania, says Romanians know well what it's like to live abroad. "Romanians go to work in other European countries because citizens of those countries don't want to do a certain type of work," he says.
Today, about 140,000 foreigners work and pay taxes in Romania. And just like Ismail Hossain, they send a large part of their earnings to their families in their home countries. "I respect Romanians. "As a Bangladeshi, I love Romania, I love the Romanian people," he says.
Author: Tiberiu Stoichici