The footage is shaky and out of focus, as if shot in a hurry, but the situation in this Romanian care home is clear. Young men lie buckled in children’s cots, their limbs contorted with disuse and atrophy, tied to the metal bars with bits of ripped-up old bed sheets. One struggles violently to free himself, another lies face down and motionless, a cord tied round his shoulders fastening him in place. Around the room cots line the walls, back to back. Their occupants are doubled up and emaciated, some rocking back and forth, others hidden under blankets. As the camera pans, they stare blankly into the lens. No-one is making a sound.
This is the Gheorghe Serban Social Care Centre in Bucharest, a government-run institution holding 57 people with varying degrees of mental and physical disability. Set in an old orphanage, it is reminiscent of the darker days of Romanian history, when institutions like this were common in hundreds of towns and villages across the country, keeping those deemed unfit for Ceausescu’s Romania firmly out of sight and barely alive. Twenty-three years on, Romania is now a liberal democracy and an EU member state, and the days of orphanages and asylums are officially over. Yet this footage was shot in May 2013. Here, and in many other institutions across the country, little has changed.
