The case of the Romanian yoga teaches, Gregorian Bivolaru, has been studied and the Romanian abuses reported by numerous human rights organisations and experts such as Amnesty International, The Helsinki Committee in Romanian (APADOR-CH), Human Rights Without Frontiers, the Romanian professor of politics Gabriel Andreescu, founder of APADOR-CH, Swedish expert in the Supreme Court Karl Erik Nyllund and the Danish journalist and human rights activist Vibeke Sperling.

The complexity and uniqueness of the case comes from the fact that a European citizen is simultaneously protected by his refugee status and looks to be apprehended for imprisonment by the same authorities and for the same persecution.

On 2 January 2006 Gregorian Bivolaru received political asylum in Sweden due to the Romanian persecution for his religious beliefs. The main reason for granting political asylum was the manner in which the Romanian authorities were running an investigation on Gregorian Bivolaru.

In 2013, Gregorian Bivolaru was convicted in absencia by the Romanian Supreme Court, to 6 years imprisonment, for the same allegations that were tried in 2006 by the Swedish Supreme Court. Romania issued a European arrest warrant on his name in June 2013.

Soteria International brought the attention in a OSCE’s HDIM-2013 side event conference on the human rights contradiction in Bivolaru’s case.

The contributors to the event, professor of international law – Lucia Rossi (Italy), international human rights lawyer – Gregory Thuan (France), historian and political scientist, founder of Romanian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights – Gabriel Andreescu (Romania), journalist and social activist - Joakim Porslund (Denmark), writer and intellectual activist Mircea Cartarescu (Romania), , human rights defender, director of HRWF Int’l - Willy Fautre (Belgium), social activist and representative of Gregorian Bivolaru, Mihai Stoian (Denmark) debated on this subject.

We reproduce here the juridical evaluation on Gregorian Bivolaru’s case done by the European Law Expert, professor at University of Bologna, Lucia Serena Rossi:

“In the case of Gregorian Bivolaru everything happened before the accession of Romania to the EU. So, this person acquired a right to asylum, the asylum has already been given, recognized, so this accession of Romania to the European Union cannot change the individual position of this subject.

Romania asked to annul this asylum, the protocol applies, it means that the Council of Ministers of the European Union must be interested by the Swedish Government which, I think, is not convenient for Romania, because it will transform an individual case in a political case.

And if the member states of the European Union find the reason of the systematic violation of freedom of religion, of freedom of association, of freedom of opinion, they could apply a procedure of Article 7, which is a sanction against Romania.”

Lucia Serena Rossi, PhD in European Law, Professor of International Law at the University of Bologna, where she is also Director of the Interdepartmental Research Centre on European Law (C.I.R.D.C.E.). Co-founder of the Observatory on Fundamental Rights in Europe, she is Visiting Professor at King's College of London,  member of the flying Faculty and coordinator of  Advanced EU Law at  the China-Europe School of Law of Beijing. Ad Personam Jean Monnet Chair (2010-2013), she has been consultant of the European Parliament and of the European Commission.

Thus, academics and international human rights activists expressed their concern that imposing on the execution of the European arrest warrant issued by Romania in such a situation, could potentially create a human rights violation. EU human rights legislation with respect to granting asylum within the Union, as well as the mechanisms of judiciary cooperation within EU, were drafted under the precondition that all member states are duly enforcing on national levels the provisions of the international human rights legislative acts. It appears that the mechanisms to verify whether the preconditions are fulfilled and consistently respected by member states are not yet in place within EU. Thus, when addressing such cases as Bivolaru’s, the recommendation is to consider the international legislative acts, such as the European Convention for Human Rights and the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (CRSR) over the provisions of the EU legislation.

Our organization, Soteria International, has well-founded concerns that the case of the yoga teacher Gregorian Bivolaru and MISA yoga school is a case of religious minority discrimination, handled in an extremely abusive manner, often in a totalitarian style, that was specific to Romanian law enforcement and judicial agencies during the communist regime, but is still used in our days.