That first assignment back in 2011 was to document the construction of a wall which effectively created a Roma ghetto in a dilapidated social housing complex on the city’s notorious Horea street. During that same mission he made his first contact with the Roma community in the settlement known as Craica and became aware of the threat of eviction by the city mayor that was building on their horizon. Recognizing the harsh reality that faced these people he assisted representatives of a Roma NGO to prepare for a public debate to ensure that they could have appropriate responses to each possible scenario. During this visit he received a veiled threat by a Roma loan shark known as Pise, who said that the Mayor of the city had asked him and his henchmen if they could make Varzariu “decide to leave.” Pise claimed to have responded to the mayor by asking “Why should I do this?” he is only here to help the Roma.”

The message was simple but Varzariu chose to ignore it. The harassment continued for several days and took on various forms, from outright threats to Pise’s entourage working to convince and threaten other members of the Roma community to be uncooperative. Claiming Varzariu was, after all, only getting rich from their hardship, from their misery. In an eventual showdown with Pise, Varzariu offered to give him all the pictures he had ever taken of Roma in the area, both current ones and those from previous assignments, provided that Pise and his family live for one year from the income generated by those pictures. The crowds that had gathered erupted with laughter and with the tensions diffused, the threats were of no further use. So Pise and his henchmen faded into the background once again. “I am sure that Pise’s threats were only half hearted,” Says Varzariu, “No matter how much he told people I was only there to exploit them for my own gain, he could see my efforts to help the Roma were genuine, but he also had to be able to tell the mayor that he had tried to get rid of me.”

A year later, at a meeting with Amnesty International in London, they confirmed what Varzariu already knew, that the mayor had every intention of liquidating the settlement at Craica. Not having the funds to pay for the mission, Amnesty asked if he would be prepared to return to Baia Mare to monitor developments there. 

Arriving back in Baia Mare just days before the date specified in evacuation orders glued mercilessly onto the doors of the makeshift dwellings at the Craica settlement, Varzariu’s efforts undermined the mayor’s plans to make good on his illegal electoral promise of “Demolishing the unsightly shacks at Craica.” As a photographer he documented the conditions the people live under, the threats they endure and the hopelessness of their situation. As a humanist he recognised the illegality of their oppression, and ensured that these concealed truths were brought into the daylight for all to see. He ensured that the Roma were informed of their rights under international law and were properly represented at hearings concerning their eviction. Explaining to them in depth of the loss of legal rights they would suffer as a direct consequence of succumbing to the mayor’s threats and empty promises if they did as he wanted and moved to “accommodation” at Cuprom, a disused and contaminated Communist Era copper factory. Moreover, the electoral promise the mayor was acting upon was aimed at the clearing of Craica not for the purposes of building a hospital or social housing or a school, but to create a picnic area.

Given the obvious illegality of the proposed action, the mere fact of Varzariu’s presence to document the events was sufficient to ensure that no evacuation or demolition operations took place. “There were no evacuations while I was there,” he explains, “But the morning after I left  the town hall proceeded with their operations, and so within 12 hours I returned and the operations again halted.”

Even as those initial evacuations were underway and he prepared to depart his home in Bucharest to return to Baia Mare, Varzariu spoke with several people from the community at Craica, advising them to stay in their homes and equipping them, word for word, with the sentence they should repeat to the authorities attempting to evict them. “We did not participate in consultations, we were not presented with alternatives , the town hall has not presented an urgent reason for these evacuations, we do not wish to move to Cuprom”.

The simple fact that those initial evictions and demolitions became so ensnared prevented the envisaged domino effect from happening and forced the mayor to abandon that particular operation. As a result only a fraction of the community was evicted and moved into the site at Cuprom. While the majority of the dwellings at Craica remain standing and the Roma, who call those dwellings home, still maintain the roofs over their heads and the legal rights they have by virtue of continuing to inhabit that settlement. 

On the night of June 2, 2012 Varzariu was notified that several of the Roma who had moved into the site at Cuprom had been admitted to hospital suffering from illnesses brought about by exposure to hazardous chemicals left in the building when they had been moved into it. By the next morning he was on site to witness the removal of chemicals from the basement of the building and the sealing off of the air vents reaching from the chemical storage facility in the basement to each floor where the Roma had been given their “accommodation”.  He was also there to witness the visit to the site by the mother of the Mayor and, after just a few short hours of breathing the air that the Roma housed at Cuprom had been sent to live in, he himself became sick due to chemical exposure. After being taken in an ambulance away from the site Varzariu alerted an NGO representing Roma of the situation and urged them to send assistance and legal aid to the victims of exposure to hazardous chemicals. At best, the fact that the Roma were moved into such a dangerous and contaminated site was severe negligence, at worst it hints at a far more sinister possibility.

Later that same year, the Roma who had been coerced into moving to Cuprom had their tenancy contracts revoked and replaced by ones with far more disadvantageous clauses, thereby reneging on the already badly biased agreement they had entered into. 

After Varzariu worked on a documentary for the BBC in 2013, one of the residents at Cuprom who was interviewed for the documentary was summoned to by the mayor and threatened with eviction if he ever spoke to Varzariu again. A tactic which the mayor continues to pursue. That Varzariu’s mere observation of events, and his awareness of the illegalities of what was taking place was perceived as enough of a nuisance for the mayor to threaten those who speak to him, is an action which speaks for itself. Illegal actions can only be carried out by people in authority who wish to preserve their “respectability”, if nobody is looking. And those “respectable” officials can only deprive people of their rights if those people are unaware that they have those rights.

In 2018 Varzariu was contacted by a member of the Roma community asking him to return to Baia Mare. “Knowing that simply by being there as a witness I had halted the demolitions at Craica,” he recalls, “A Roma man from the Pirita area phoned me about a new turn of events… The mayor had enacted a rule banning livestock from the settlement.” So after eviction drives had failed, the mayor had turned to new tactics to fulfil his Romaphobic election promises.

The mayor had enacted a rule banning livestock from the settlement.” So after eviction drives had failed, the mayor had turned to new tactics to fulfil his Romaphobic election promises. The Roma, who have no real access to the jobs and ways of making a living that others see as their right, have to eke out a living doing the work that nobody else will do, by recycling scrap materials, making small items for sale or by raising livestock.  Livestock is crucial to Roma survival as they need horses to draw their carts and pigs to raise for meat. With this sudden prohibition the Roma faced the impossible reality, that their main source of support and income had become illegal. The mayor, having failed to coerce, threaten and harass the Roma into leaving, had decided to effectively, starve them out.

Varzariu continued to document the plight of the Roma of Baia Mare, even as some elements within the community were being coerced into turning against him. “On October 2, 2018, I stood in shock as I listened in on a phone call in which a town hall employee asked a loan-shark from the Pritia settlement to do whatever it takes to get rid of me.”  He recalls, “They said to this loan shark, “if you want to continue to “kiss welfare payments” then you must get rid of this guy.” Within the hour he was attacked by a man claiming to be the son of a community leader, but who was in fact another loan shark who had succumbed to the mayors demands. Only the protection of the community who had come to trust him enabled him to escape unharmed.  At this point Varzariu presented the facts to the Romanian National Council for Combating Discrimination (CNCD). 

In that same year he found a legal solution to enable him to directly address the CNCD to ask for the reopening of the file concerning the wall which segregated the Roma community on Horea Street from the rest of Baia Mare. And then in March 2020, a few days before the lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the CNCD unanimously voted on the solution proposed by Varzariu and re-sanctioned the Baia Mare authorties. By this time, hardened by years of witnessing the injustice and discrimination and acutely aware of the Romaphobic nature of attitudes in Baia Mare, Varzariu took no chances and sued Baia Mare authorities demanding the demolition of the wall. 

His most recent trip to Baia Mare was to attend the convening of this court hearing. In the few hours remaining after the opening session he visited the communities at Craica, Horea Street and Cuprom. 

“ At Craica the children I first met have grown up, the people got older. So did I. But the place still has some of the original defiant character. The only evidence that remains of the few dwellings demolished by the mayor are the photographs I took of them. The old crew of Roma rogues like Pise have been replaced by a new guard of members of a so-called Social initiative group have appeared, lording it over their fellow Roma like slave owners. And Marin, the one who persuaded some of his community to move to Cuprom, he died some years ago.” 

In the social housing complex on Horea Street one of the tenement blocks appeared newly renovated, but remaining off limits to the former tennants, many of whom were thrown into the streets. It sits apart surrounded by a high barbed wire fence. “Maybe they are keeping this one for the people of Craica.” Muses Varzariu. In the part of the complex which lies behind the wall the residents live so much in fear of losing the roof over their heads, that they seem to have forgotten about the wall hemming them in. “They have even found a use for that wall, one that the Mayor never thought of, they use it to dry their laundry on. So now if the court action is successful and the wall comes down, I realise in horror that I will leave them with no place to dry their clothes!” 

At Cuprom, it is a disaster. More than 110 families, 800 souls live in the three annexes of the former factory. “ In 2018 I had the feeling that I was visiting a portal into hell but now the inferno is raging. The dirt, the garbage, the dogs, the scars left by fires, the smell, the crimes…. It creates a setting that even the producers of Mad Max could not have imagined. Everyone there says the same thing.. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you and moved here from Craica.”

Even during this brief visit it didn’t take long for the mayor’s office to inform the Police of Varzariu’s visit. It seems that revealing the truth he has made him an enemy of the city’s officials.

After 10 years of involvement,  Varzariu is forced to admit that only a bleak future awaits the Roma of Baia Mare.

“It’s not because they don’t want to escape this vicious cycle which holds them captive,” he says, “But because people continue to elect mayors like the one in Baia Mare and because we leave the Roma prey to the malignant forces within their communities who syphon off whatever little assistance is given by the authorities and NGO’s. I’ve learned that you can’t help anyone if they don’t want to be helped….

We will tear down the wall at Horea Street, not only for the Roma, but for me and those like me who see the wall as an act of brutal segregation and discrimination against us all. I feel the injustice that the wall represents and that injustice burns me. It constantly reminds me that I am surrounded by racists, that all racism is morally repugnant and that somehow discrimination against Roma remains the last acceptable form of racism in Europe, and around the world.”