In the political-diplomatic context of the preparations for the Belgrade Follow-up Meeting to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and of Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, inspired by the former, the initiative by the Romanian writer Paul Goma to start a human rights movement in Romania, at the beginning of 1977, was seen as an open declaration of war by the communist regime. All those who joined the Goma Movement were subject to repression. The writer would be in danger of losing his life because of the attempts to assassinate him by the secret police. A sudden death was preferable to a public trial, which would have seriously damaged the image of the regime in Bucharest, especially since in 1977 provisions dealing with political crimes had been removed from the Criminal Code. Released from prison under pressure from the West, the dissident writer, banned in Romania, continued to be one of the leading critical voices against the Ceaușescu regime while in exile. When he was forced to leave the country in November 1977, the writer was warned by the Securitate general Nicolae Pleșiță that the long arm of the secret police would reach him no matter where he was. In the 1980s, at the behest of the party leaders, the secret police were still working out ways to silence him. Just as he survived the first assassination attempt (in the Rahova prison in Bucharest, April 1977), Paul Goma would survive two more attempts, in 1981 and 1982, planned by the Securitate, under direct orders from Ceaușescu, the first attempt being carried out by the international terrorist Carlos the Jackal, the second one by the Securitate officer Matei Haiducu, based in Paris.