Riot Police Crack Down on Anti-Communist Protests

POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN MOLDOVA

Riot police have regained control of Moldova's parliament after anti-Communist demonstrations turned violent Tuesday. At least 170 people were injured and one person died during the riots, which are in reaction to the Communist Party's victory in Sunday's election.

The Eastern European country of Moldova has plunged into a political crisis following Sunday's parliamentary election, with the capital Chisinau seeing its worst political violence in decades.

An uneasy peace settled over Chisinau on Wednesday after riot police regained control of the parliament and the president's office early on Wednesday morning. Dozens of protesters gathered early on Wednesday for yet more demonstrations, but there was no sign of the violence that had marked Tuesday's protests.

At least 10,000 people, mainly young people and students, took to the streets of Chisinau Tuesday in protest against what they said was a rigged election result. Protestors stormed the parliament building and ransacked the interior. They threw chairs, tables and computer equipment out the windows and lit a large fire in front of the parliament, where they burned furniture and other objects. A small group managed to break into the president's office.


Fighting broke out between protesters and police in the streets of the capital. Police responded with water cannon and tear gas.

The demonstrators, mainly young people and students, carried Moldovan, Romanian and European Union flags and shouted anti-Communist slogans. They accuse the Communists of having rigged Sunday's vote, in which the ruling Communist Party got almost exactly 50 percent, and are calling for new elections. They say Moldova, which is one of Europe's poorest countries, has no future if the Communist Party stays in power. The three main opposition parties managed to get a combined 35 percent of the vote.

According to state television, one woman died of carbon monoxide poisoning inside the parliament. The Interior Ministry said there had been 193 arrests and that around 96 police and 79 demonstrators had been injured. Interior Ministry spokeswoman Ala Meleca said the police would use firearms to restore public order "if necessary."

Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin accused pro-EU opposition parties of being behind the protests, which he called an attempted coup. In a statement read out on state television, he called the opposition "fascists (who) want to destroy democracy and independence in Moldova." On Wednesday he said he was "running out of patience" with protesters.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that the protests were a plot aimed at undermining Moldovan sovereignty and blamed forces supporting a union with Romania.


The leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, Vlad Filat, accused the government of reneging on an earlier agreement to recount Sunday's election. He told the news agency Reuters he feared "very serious repression" and warned that "political leaders and participants" might be arrested.

The newly elected parliament has until June 8 to appoint a new president. Voronin is constitutionally barred from serving a third term. The ruling Communist Party, which has been in power since 2001, has taken a more pro-European course in recent years after initially adopting a staunchly pro-Russia stance.

Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe, with an average monthly wage of €175. Many Moldovans, especially young people, work abroad and many in the country support reunification with Romania, which would mean joining the EU. Moldova was part of Romania from 1918 to 1940 and approximately 800,000 of its 3.4 million inhabitants have already applied for Romanian citizenship.

Der Spiegel, 04/08/2009

No Clear Goals for Transdniestria

// The price of the question (Kommersant, 14/11/2008)

The history of relations between Moscow and Chisinau and all of Russian policy toward a Transdniestrian settlement has been checkered. In 2001, Communist Vladimir Voronin became president of Moldova thanks in large part to his position in favor of closer ties with Russia. By the time he was reelected in 2005, he had made a complete turnabout, rejecting the famous “Kozak memorandum” and advancing a platform on the country’s future in Europe. In recent months, Russia’s influence on both banks of the Dniester seems to have grown, leading to a variety of expectations.

The simplified view is that Russia should sell them a solution to the problem that is acceptable to it – with a guarantee of Moldova’s neutrality and a confederative government, with Transdniestria having the right to secede should the rest of Moldova unite with Romania. It should promise Chisinau massive economic aid, pressure Tiraspol, interests the politicians personally in the outcome and, in short, engage in classical diplomacy as practiced by a major regional power with weaker neighbors.

But for some reason, that is not happening. Three reasons can be proposed. First, the habit remains of looking at Moldova as a post-Soviet country in its 17th year of independence. If it is seen as a historical part of the Balkans region, everything looks different. The Balkans are part of the European integrative areal. Small and poor Moldova has a different future in that context. After Romania entered the European Union in 2007, that prospect became more real for Moldova at the individual level, if not at the institutional. Evidence of that are the stubbornly, or not so stubbornly, denied rumors of Moldovan residents’ mass receipt of Romanian citizenship. No matter how skeptical one looks at the EU’s initiatives for “Eastern partnership” and “Black Sea synergy,” they have a positive resonance in small countries.

Second, Russia has no common border with Moldova. When Ukraine’s interest in the region was limited to the preservation of various corrupt systems linked to Transdniestria, that fact was not particularly meaningful. But since Orange Kiev has completely gone over to Brussels’ side, it is very important for measuring Russia’s potential.

Finally, Russia’s real strategic, and even tactical, interest is still not clear. That makes the parties involved wary and makes them look for support elsewhere. What does Russia need a settlement in Transdniestria for? Only to show that Moscow can act more wisely than the West did in Kosovo? It still will not make up for the loss of image from the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. So no one should be surprised it this phase of Moscow’s policy in the region has a checkered end as well.

Arkady Moshes, director of the Russian program at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

Comments: Transdniestria is a breakaway territory of Moldova. It’s a rogue state with its own flag, currency, armed forces, authorities, newspapers and so, but it has not been recognized by any other state –not even Russia-. Because of this status, Transdniestria is a legal “black-hole” for drug, weapons and ammo smugglers.

It’s easy to understand that the interest of the government of Tiraspol is to keep at all costs the actual status quo, comfortable situation which allows him to follow its commercial activities of sales of weapon and narcotic across the world with complete impunity. In effect, international law is not applied in this zone of frozen conflict.