POLITICAL REPRESSION AND POLITICAL PRISONERS IN MOLDOVA<\/strong><\/h1><\/div>In 2014, Moldova signed the Association\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Agreement with the European\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Union,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 committing itself to respect the democratic rules recognized in the EU. However, in reality, since 2014, a repressive regime under the leadership\u00a0 of\u00a0 the\u00a0 chairman\u00a0 of the Democratic Party, oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc has been established and continues to strengthen in Moldova.
\nCurrently, Moldova is a captured state in which the \u201cinvader\u201d Plahotniuc, using methods of corruption, blackmail, intimidation, has established complete personal control over the parliament, government, justice, the media, and business. To consolidate his regime, Plahotniuc went on to direct repression against his political opponents, civil activists, denunciators of corruption, journalists who dared to raise their voice against the violation of the rules of democracy and the rule of law in the country.
\nPlahotniuc\u2019s Moldova is a country in which political prisoners have appeared. Citizens are prosecuted for trumped-up cases and thrown into jail only because they dared to oppose the established repressive regime.<\/p>\n
Petrenco\u2019s group
\nOn September 6, 2015, during an anti-government protest rally near the Prosecutor General\u2019s Office, police detained Grigore Petrenco, honorary member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the\u00a0 Council\u00a0 of\u00a0 Europe,\u00a0 leader of the left-wing opposition party Krasnii Block (formerly Our Home Moldova) and five other activists – Alexander Ro\u0219co, Pavel Grigorciuc,\u00a0 Mihail\u00a0 Amerberg, Oleg Buznea, Vladimir Jurat.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0\u00a0 protest\u00a0\u00a0 was\u00a0\u00a0 peaceful, but the police claimed that a number of its employees were slightly injured, which was the reason for the arrest on charges of \u201corganizing riots.\u201d During the investigation, the detention of Petrenco\u00a0 and\u00a0 other\u00a0 detainees in the remand prison was extended several times. The prison administration refused Petrenco to have a special medical examination after being in the premises, where prisoners with\u00a0\u00a0 tuberculosis\u00a0\u00a0 had\u00a0\u00a0 access.<\/p>\n
The lawyers of political prisoners repeatedly stated\u00a0 about the violation of the procedures, but their complaints were ignored. Only on April 26, 2016, the arrested were transferred from prison to judicial control.
\nThe persecution of the \u201cPetrenco\u2019s group\u201d was recognized as politically motivated in the report of the US State Department on observance of human rights in the countries of the world for 2015. A number of members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe stated that the arrests were\u00a0\u00a0 political\u00a0\u00a0 and\u00a0\u00a0 called\u00a0\u00a0 on the authorities to release the detainees, ensure freedom of expression and assembly, as well as the right to protest.
\nThe trial of the \u201cPetrenco\u2019s group\u201d has turned into a farce, constantly dragging out because of the lack of any evidence of guilt of political activists.<\/p>\n
Platform \u201cDignity and Truth\u201d<\/p>\n
Another political formation that was subjected to politically motivated persecution by the Plahotniuc\u2019s regime was the political party \u201cPlatform Dignity and Truth\u201d.<\/p>\n
After the party organized this April\u00a0 24,\u00a0 2016\u00a0 anti-government rally in Chisinau, activists of the Platform for Dignity and Truth, Radu Cibotari, Valeriu Ca\u0219u, Alexandru Panu\u0163\u0103, Ion Matasevici were arrested on charges of \u201corganizing riots\u201d.
\nAfter the same rally, the entrepreneur, owner of the leading IT company, Internet provider Starnet, Alexander Machedon,\u00a0 was\u00a0 incriminated with a criminal case on charges of\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cillegal\u00a0\u00a0 business\u00a0\u00a0 activities.\u201d The case was initiated after Machedon, sympathetic to the \u201cPlatform for Dignity and Truth,\u201d openly urged fellow citizens to go to protest rallies of the opposition.
\nThe\u00a0 activist\u00a0 of\u00a0 the\u00a0 \u201cPlatform for Dignity and Truth\u201d Sergiu Cebotari,\u00a0\u00a0 being\u00a0\u00a0 an\u00a0\u00a0 employee of the State Enterprise \u201cPo\u0219ta Moldovei\u201d, publicly delivered an exposure of the criminal scheme of smuggling in bags with \u201cmail correspondence\u201d of anabolic means to the EU countries and the USA. After that, he was arrested on a trumped-up criminal case on charges of fraud.
\nGeneral Secretary of the \u201cPlatform fo Dignity and Truth\u201d Chiril Motpan was severely beaten by the police during an opposition protest at the Parliament building on January 20, 2016.<\/p>\n
Civil activists<\/p>\n
Victims of politically motivated persecution by the Moldovan authorities were civil activists, lawyers, denunciators of corruption, journalists.
\nAttorney Anna Ursachi, who represented\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 interests\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 of the Petrenco\u2019s group, Renato Usat\u00eei,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 other\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 oppositionists and activists in the courts, was herself forced to leave Moldova in October 2016 because of the threat of arrest on a criminal case against her. Ursachi is accused of\u00a0 having\u00a0 allegedly\u00a0 participated in\u00a0 the\u00a0 murder\u00a0 20\u00a0 years\u00a0 ago. On all Plahotniuc\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0 television stations,\u00a0\u00a0 a\u00a0\u00a0 slander\u00a0\u00a0 campaign was launched against Ursachi under the heading the \u201cDevil\u2019s Advocate\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Currently,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ursachi lives in one of the EU states and does not have any opportunity to return to Moldova.
\nThere has been also a criminal proceeding instituted against another\u00a0\u00a0 lawyer\u00a0\u00a0 who\u00a0\u00a0 defends the interests of the opposition, Eduard Rudenco on charges that he allegedly extorted money from some drug dealers to \u201csettle\u201d their cases in the courts.
\nOn April 5, 2017, the editor- in-chief of the online edition of Newsmaker, Vladimir Soloviev, reported that he was being watched outdoors. Newsmaker repeatedly published journalistic investigations\u00a0 on\u00a0 corruption\u00a0 in the highest echelons of power in Moldova. Unlike the official press and media holding of Plahotniuc, the publication seeks objectively to publish the activities of the opposition.<\/p>\n
Soloviev\u00a0 published\u00a0 photos and\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 videos,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 which\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 indicate the\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 organized\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 surveillance of\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 unidentified\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 persons.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He
\napplied\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 police,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 but they refused to identify the participants\u00a0 in\u00a0 the\u00a0 harassment of\u00a0 the\u00a0 journalist.\u00a0 According\u00a0 to the\u00a0\u00a0 Criminal\u00a0\u00a0 Procedure\u00a0\u00a0 Code of Moldova, visual observation can be conducted to disclose or prevent serious and particularly serious crimes. Such suspicions about the journalist are absurd. Soloviev himself and professional journalistic organizations regarded the surveillance as a violation of the law, an attempt to intimidate a journalist and impede his professional activities.
\nBecause of the threat to freedom and life itself, the denunciators of Moldova\u2019s most vicious corruption crime – a billion dollars theft\u00a0\u00a0 from the banking system (this amount was 15% of the country\u2019s GDP) were forced to leave in November 2014. Mikhail Gofman, a former officer of the National Center for Combating Corruption, and Sergiu Sagaidac, a bank consultant, left the country after claiming that the \u201ctheft of the century\u201d was carried out with the connivance of the top political leadership and all the authorities of the country, and Plahotniuc himself and his immediate surroundings became the main beneficiaries of this theft. Gofman is forced to hide in the US, Sagaidac is in the UK.<\/p>\n
In August 2016 Forbes published an article \u2018Billion Dollar Theft: In Moldova, One Rich Banker\u2019s \u2018Crime\u2019 Has A Nation Doing Time\u2019.
\n\u201cThe 43 year old former deputy director of anti-money laundering and terrorist finance for Moldova Mihail Gofman has made enemies with his country\u2019s most powerful billionaire \u2013 Vladimir Plahotniuc. He is suspected of orchestrating the ransacking of three banks and the theft of half of the reserves of the National Bank of Moldova. Interpol has had an investigation into Plahotniuc\u2019s activities throughout Western Europe since
\n2007.\u00a0 Plahotniuc\u00a0 was\u00a0 banned by\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Independence\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Party for running for Prime Minister because of his spotty past. To put it simply, Plahotniuc is Moldova\u2019s man behind the curtain. He is an A-list businessman who owns everything from luxury resorts to media outfits, and is vice chairman and chief financial backer of the ruling Democratic Party\u201d. \u201cThe entire system was rigged by Plahotniuc, with Vlad Filat in his corner,\u201d he says of the country\u2019s former Prime Minister. Filat is serving a 9 year prison term for supposedly allowing National Bank reserves to be ransacked. The money was all funneled into three\u00a0 banks\u00a0 majority\u00a0 controlled by Plahotniuc. The reserves went from $2.8 billion to $1.8 billion in less than three years\u201d.<\/p>\n
Moldovan\u00a0 opposition politicians and civil activists are determined to continue fighting the mafia regime of the oligarch Plahotniuc\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to rid Moldova and Europe of this shameful phenomenon.<\/p>\n<\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>
In 2014, Moldova signed the Association\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Agreement with the European\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Union,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 committing itself to respect the democratic rules recognized in the EU. However, in reality, since 2014, a repressive regime under the leadership\u00a0 of\u00a0 the\u00a0 chairman\u00a0 of the Democratic Party, oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc has been established and continues to strengthen in Moldova.
\nCurrently, Moldova is a captured state in which the \u201cinvader\u201d Plahotniuc, using methods of corruption, blackmail, intimidation, has established complete personal control over the parliament, government, justice, the media, and business. To consolidate his regime, Plahotniuc went on to direct repression against his political opponents, civil activists, denunciators of corruption, journalists who dared to raise their voice against the violation of the rules of democracy and the rule of law in the country.
\nPlahotniuc\u2019s Moldova is a country in which political prisoners have appeared. Citizens are prosecuted for trumped-up cases and thrown into jail only because they dared to oppose the established repressive regime.<\/p>\n
Petrenco\u2019s group
\nOn September 6, 2015, during an anti-government protest rally near the Prosecutor General\u2019s Office, police detained Grigore Petrenco, honorary member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the\u00a0 Council\u00a0 of\u00a0 Europe,\u00a0 leader of the left-wing opposition party Krasnii Block (formerly Our Home Moldova) and five other activists – Alexander Ro\u0219co, Pavel Grigorciuc,\u00a0 Mihail\u00a0 Amerberg, Oleg Buznea, Vladimir Jurat.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0\u00a0 protest\u00a0\u00a0 was\u00a0\u00a0 peaceful, but the police claimed that a number of its employees were slightly injured, which was the reason for the arrest on charges of \u201corganizing riots.\u201d During the investigation, the detention of Petrenco\u00a0 and\u00a0 other\u00a0 detainees in the remand prison was extended several times. The prison administration refused Petrenco to have a special medical examination after being in the premises, where prisoners with\u00a0\u00a0 tuberculosis\u00a0\u00a0 had\u00a0\u00a0 access.<\/p>\n
The lawyers of political prisoners repeatedly stated\u00a0 about the violation of the procedures, but their complaints were ignored. Only on April 26, 2016, the arrested were transferred from prison to judicial control.
\nThe persecution of the \u201cPetrenco\u2019s group\u201d was recognized as politically motivated in the report of the US State Department on observance of human rights in the countries of the world for 2015. A number of members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe stated that the arrests were\u00a0\u00a0 political\u00a0\u00a0 and\u00a0\u00a0 called\u00a0\u00a0 on the authorities to release the detainees, ensure freedom of expression and assembly, as well as the right to protest.
\nThe trial of the \u201cPetrenco\u2019s group\u201d has turned into a farce, constantly dragging out because of the lack of any evidence of guilt of political activists.<\/p>\n
Platform \u201cDignity and Truth\u201d<\/p>\n
Another political formation that was subjected to politically motivated persecution by the Plahotniuc\u2019s regime was the political party \u201cPlatform Dignity and Truth\u201d.<\/p>\n
After the party organized this April\u00a0 24,\u00a0 2016\u00a0 anti-government rally in Chisinau, activists of the Platform for Dignity and Truth, Radu Cibotari, Valeriu Ca\u0219u, Alexandru Panu\u0163\u0103, Ion Matasevici were arrested on charges of \u201corganizing riots\u201d.
\nAfter the same rally, the entrepreneur, owner of the leading IT company, Internet provider Starnet, Alexander Machedon,\u00a0 was\u00a0 incriminated with a criminal case on charges of\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cillegal\u00a0\u00a0 business\u00a0\u00a0 activities.\u201d The case was initiated after Machedon, sympathetic to the \u201cPlatform for Dignity and Truth,\u201d openly urged fellow citizens to go to protest rallies of the opposition.
\nThe\u00a0 activist\u00a0 of\u00a0 the\u00a0 \u201cPlatform for Dignity and Truth\u201d Sergiu Cebotari,\u00a0\u00a0 being\u00a0\u00a0 an\u00a0\u00a0 employee of the State Enterprise \u201cPo\u0219ta Moldovei\u201d, publicly delivered an exposure of the criminal scheme of smuggling in bags with \u201cmail correspondence\u201d of anabolic means to the EU countries and the USA. After that, he was arrested on a trumped-up criminal case on charges of fraud.
\nGeneral Secretary of the \u201cPlatform fo Dignity and Truth\u201d Chiril Motpan was severely beaten by the police during an opposition protest at the Parliament building on January 20, 2016.<\/p>\n
Civil activists<\/p>\n
Victims of politically motivated persecution by the Moldovan authorities were civil activists, lawyers, denunciators of corruption, journalists.
\nAttorney Anna Ursachi, who represented\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 interests\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 of the Petrenco\u2019s group, Renato Usat\u00eei,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 other\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 oppositionists and activists in the courts, was herself forced to leave Moldova in October 2016 because of the threat of arrest on a criminal case against her. Ursachi is accused of\u00a0 having\u00a0 allegedly\u00a0 participated in\u00a0 the\u00a0 murder\u00a0 20\u00a0 years\u00a0 ago. On all Plahotniuc\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0 television stations,\u00a0\u00a0 a\u00a0\u00a0 slander\u00a0\u00a0 campaign was launched against Ursachi under the heading the \u201cDevil\u2019s Advocate\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Currently,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ursachi lives in one of the EU states and does not have any opportunity to return to Moldova.
\nThere has been also a criminal proceeding instituted against another\u00a0\u00a0 lawyer\u00a0\u00a0 who\u00a0\u00a0 defends the interests of the opposition, Eduard Rudenco on charges that he allegedly extorted money from some drug dealers to \u201csettle\u201d their cases in the courts.
\nOn April 5, 2017, the editor- in-chief of the online edition of Newsmaker, Vladimir Soloviev, reported that he was being watched outdoors. Newsmaker repeatedly published journalistic investigations\u00a0 on\u00a0 corruption\u00a0 in the highest echelons of power in Moldova. Unlike the official press and media holding of Plahotniuc, the publication seeks objectively to publish the activities of the opposition.<\/p>\n
Soloviev\u00a0 published\u00a0 photos and\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 videos,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 which\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 indicate the\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 organized\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 surveillance of\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 unidentified\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 persons.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He
\napplied\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 police,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 but they refused to identify the participants\u00a0 in\u00a0 the\u00a0 harassment of\u00a0 the\u00a0 journalist.\u00a0 According\u00a0 to the\u00a0\u00a0 Criminal\u00a0\u00a0 Procedure\u00a0\u00a0 Code of Moldova, visual observation can be conducted to disclose or prevent serious and particularly serious crimes. Such suspicions about the journalist are absurd. Soloviev himself and professional journalistic organizations regarded the surveillance as a violation of the law, an attempt to intimidate a journalist and impede his professional activities.
\nBecause of the threat to freedom and life itself, the denunciators of Moldova\u2019s most vicious corruption crime – a billion dollars theft\u00a0\u00a0 from the banking system (this amount was 15% of the country\u2019s GDP) were forced to leave in November 2014. Mikhail Gofman, a former officer of the National Center for Combating Corruption, and Sergiu Sagaidac, a bank consultant, left the country after claiming that the \u201ctheft of the century\u201d was carried out with the connivance of the top political leadership and all the authorities of the country, and Plahotniuc himself and his immediate surroundings became the main beneficiaries of this theft. Gofman is forced to hide in the US, Sagaidac is in the UK.<\/p>\n
In August 2016 Forbes published an article \u2018Billion Dollar Theft: In Moldova, One Rich Banker\u2019s \u2018Crime\u2019 Has A Nation Doing Time\u2019.
\n\u201cThe 43 year old former deputy director of anti-money laundering and terrorist finance for Moldova Mihail Gofman has made enemies with his country\u2019s most powerful billionaire \u2013 Vladimir Plahotniuc. He is suspected of orchestrating the ransacking of three banks and the theft of half of the reserves of the National Bank of Moldova. Interpol has had an investigation into Plahotniuc\u2019s activities throughout Western Europe since
\n2007.\u00a0 Plahotniuc\u00a0 was\u00a0 banned by\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Independence\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Party for running for Prime Minister because of his spotty past. To put it simply, Plahotniuc is Moldova\u2019s man behind the curtain. He is an A-list businessman who owns everything from luxury resorts to media outfits, and is vice chairman and chief financial backer of the ruling Democratic Party\u201d. \u201cThe entire system was rigged by Plahotniuc, with Vlad Filat in his corner,\u201d he says of the country\u2019s former Prime Minister. Filat is serving a 9 year prison term for supposedly allowing National Bank reserves to be ransacked. The money was all funneled into three\u00a0 banks\u00a0 majority\u00a0 controlled by Plahotniuc. The reserves went from $2.8 billion to $1.8 billion in less than three years\u201d.<\/p>\n
Moldovan\u00a0 opposition politicians and civil activists are determined to continue fighting the mafia regime of the oligarch Plahotniuc\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to rid Moldova and Europe of this shameful phenomenon.<\/p>\n<\/div>
![](\"http:\/\/humanrights-online.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/political_repression.jpg\")
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