The Offenses Against Religious Freedom According to the Romanian Criminal Code of 2014

The latest Romanian Criminal Code came into force on the 1st of February 2014. Given that the previous Criminal Code entered in effect on the 1st of January 1969, it was designed according to the ideology of the Communist regime and it was becoming increasingly difficult to adapt it to the changes which occurred in the Romanian society after the Revolution of December 1989. Therefore, the need for a new, unified and updated criminal legislation was keenly felt in 2014. This paper will address one of the innovations proposed by this normative act, the crimes against religious freedom and respect owed to the deceased. The analysis will begin with a few remarks concerning the theoretical structure of an offense (infracțiune) in the Romanian Criminal Law, as the international public might not be aware of the subtle differences between the terminology used by this legal system and some of the concepts used in other English-speaking countries. Having succinctly clarified these differences, the paper then proceeds to a study of the four offenses included in this category: preventing the freedom to practice religion (art. 381), desecration of places or objects of worship (art. 382), desecration of corpses or graves (art. 383), illegal harvesting of tissues or organs (art. 384). The conclusions are meant to highlight a few of the key concepts which have to be taken into account if one attempts to realize a comparative study between this segment of the Romanian criminal law and other domestic legal systems.