The pinnacle of humiliation: Police asks upkeep money from the parents of detained protesters

I have never thought in my life that I will be witnessing the law-enforcement agencies in my country behaving like terror squads, kidnapping people from the streets, putting them into custody with blatant violation of their rights and every single line of the Constitution, beating them till they turn black with bruises, breaking their bones, and using other frightening methods of “investigation”.

Local media not controlled by the Communists reported cases of young protesters being beaten up with plastic bottle full of water, to avoid visual recognition of phisical abuses, and that sentences were voiced for groups of protesters, inside police offices with no proper legal procedure, based on their wounds and bruises. The worse were you beaten, the longer the sentence, so that when you are put free, your body does not reveal the signs of cruel battering, stated a freed protester.

Female protesters which were incarcerated at the same time as their male fellows were forced to undress and were physically abused, according to Ziare.com.

There is one more thing that stroke me – and left me speechless. Unimedia reports, quoting Evenimentul Zilei, that police has asked the parents of protesters, who were kidnapped from the streets by people in civilian and  ended up in the police custody, that they pay the police the upkeep of their children in prison. The amount they request is MDL 5.9 (~$0.5) per day, and according to the police should cover the meal, which was described by a detained protester (Ion Cretu) as “sheer water- tea” and “boiled substance good only to feed pigs”.

Just to release you of any doubts – FT published yesterday an article, which reports that Marian Lupu, the Communist speaker of the former Parliament, has admitted the brutality of the police over the last days.

The post was written based on that Unimedia article. I could not embed this video into the post, but I advice you to watch it.

Person watch it

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A third young dead men linked to the 7 April anti-communist protests

It seems that the body count continues. Unimedia reports that a third dead body of a 26 year young men was brought by the police to his parents in the town of Soroca, in a hermetically sealed coffin, as the body was already decomposing. According to Unimedia, the mayor of Soroca town, Victor Sau, stated that police refused to provide any explanations on the reasons behind the decease of the young Eugen Tapu, and that according to the papers he died on 7 April, the day when police begin the mass arrests of young protesters (they reportedly arrested around 200 people that day).

Ziarul de Garda wrote that the Tapu family did not have a lawyer. Below that article, the user parisian said in his comment that a doctor, called to take care of the police wounds had seen in the neighboring room around 30 dead bodies of young people. According to the parisian, the doctor was threatened that if he speaks about what he has seen, his life will be short. While that kind of hearsay is to be taken very careful, the fact is that at least 10 young protesters were declared missing, which means in the next days we may learn about more deceases.

According to these two media outlets, and the comments below the articles, police claimed the last two dead young protesters committed suicide.

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