Amnesty International: Hundred of young protesters tortured in Moldova’s prisons

That’s the link to the post on the Amnesty International web-site. Comparing to the reports that the local human rights watchdogs provide on the terrifying treatment the protesters are exposed to, that AI report is just a drop in the ocean. I would like to quote two excerpts from the AI article:

“They beat us like animals. I thought they would beat us until we were dead. It is very hard when you are innocent.”

Anatol Matasaru was reported to have been forced by the policemen who were beating him to lick their boots so that they would stop.

I have no words to add. Just one more thing – while president Voronin has announced the amnesty of all protesters detained after the anti-communists rally last week, except those with criminal past, he did not say a word about launching investigations into “allegations of inhuman treatment” of young protesters.

The Moldovan “Andijan” and the forthcoming “Karimov effect”

I realize there will be people insisting the parallel is not accurate, and maybe even misleading. Without any offence, I’ll advice those to get informed better about what happened in Moldova during 6-9 April 2009, and in the days following the mass youth anti-communist protests.

You might say well, it is really not possible to compare the two cases. However, in my view both the Uzbekistan’s Andijan massacre in May 2005 and the Moldova’s anti-communist protests in April 2009 have one common thing – people protested against an authoritarian government, defending their rights, resisting against the misuse of power by the incumbent government. Only time will reveal all the atrocities committed against the young protesters. Though, even the small evidence collected by the civil society groups and domestic human rights watchdogs is terrifying. Two young people are dead, tens missing, hundreds are imprisoned in conditions that the superficial visit of a UN envoy have found “cruel, inhuman or degrading”. And the UN visitor was not allowed to enter two other detainees’ facilities, which we can certainly expect to have even worse conditions.

This is a Moldovan “Andijan” which takes place at the border of the European Union, and under the indifferent eyes of the Western ambassadors stationed in Moldova. Regardless many revealing videos and photos that the local media has made public, the EU ambassadors, these wannabe champions of human rights and freedom, have not yet reacted. They are waiting, exactly the way they did after the elections were

Moscow is Still the Master – the complete version of the TOL article

That is a more complete version of the “Moscow is Still the Master” article, published by the Transitions Online recently.

Moscow is Still the Master

A hazy statement designed in the Kremlin exposes the flaws in the conflict-resolution format for Moldova’s separatist territory.

Moldovan presidents have always been notorious for their personal approach to negotiations with Moscow, resulting usually in sound, long-lasting, and humiliating diplomatic defeats. Their Soviet-type leadership style – all three were former high-level apparatchiks – partly explains this foreign policy behavior. Historic feelings of inferiority toward the Kremlin have plagued the Moldovan political class since the country gained independence in 1991.

Eighteen years later, the lame-duck president Vladimir Voronin who is loosing his office after the 5 April parliamentary elections in Moldova, has stepped on the same rake. On 18 March, less than a month before elections won by his Communist Party yesterday, he signed a common declaration with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the secessionist Transdniester leader Igor Smirnov. Quickly tagged