Human rights in Transnistria

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Transnistria
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Human rights of Transnistria have been under severe criticism from abroad. The Republic of Moldova, as well as other foreign states and non-governmental organizations claim that the government of Transnistria is authoritarian and has a poor human rights record, and is accused of arbitrary arrest and torture. With the stated aim of wanting to rectify its human rights record and bring it in line with European standards, Transnistria in 2006 established an independent ombudsman office.^[1]

1 Overview
2 Ilie Ilaşcu Group
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Overview

Some organizations claim that the right of free assembly or association is not fully respected and that religious freedom is limited by denying registration to Baptists, Methodists, and the Church of the Living God. Transnistrian authorities also reportedly accused Jehovah's Witnesses of lacking patriotism and spreading Western influence, and developed school teaching aids along those lines containing negative and defamatory information regarding the Jehovah's Witnesses.^[2] In 2007, the US-based Christian Broadcasting Network denounced Transnistrian KGB persecution of Protestants.^[3]

The Republic of Moldova accuses the PMR administration of organizing incursions into some of the left-bank villages controlled by the Moldovan government such as Vasilevca, which they claim also result in arbitrary arrests, beatings and sometimes even deaths.

Several alleged crimes by the paramilitary forces of the Transnistrian government remained uninvestigated. According to the Moldovan Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, 20 people were killed in the village of Chiţcani, 5 km south of Tiraspol, between 1996 and 2000. No government authority investigated these deaths. Moldova declared that it has no access to the village, and Transnistrian authorities do not wish to investigate^[4].

According to a human rights report by the US Department of State, prisons in Transnistria are said to be harsh.^[5]

It is alleged that the trafficking of women is a serious problem in the territory, with women from both Moldova and Transnistria transported through Transnistria to other countries.^[6] Transnistria denies these allegations, claiming that no solid evidence have been provided so far.^[7]

Transnistrian local authorities insist that public education for ethnic Moldovans in their mother tongue is done using the Soviet-originated Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet. The usage of the Latin script for the Moldovan language, which is the the norm in the rest of the Moldovan-speaking areas, is restricted to only 6 privately funded schools. In the summer of 2004, this issue sparked into yet another political conflict between Chisinau and Tiraspol. Four out of six schools that taught the Moldovan language using the Latin script were closed by the authorities, who claimed this was due to the refusal of the schools to apply for official accreditation. The schools were later reopened after pressure from the European Union (by introducing a travel ban to 10 Transnistrian education officials), but as private institutions.

According to US Department of State human rights reports for 2003-2004 and 2005, the right of citizens to change their government is severely restricted; authorities reportedly continued to use torture and arbitrary arrest and detention. Transnistrian authorities harassed independent media and opposition lawmakers, restricted freedom of association and of religion, and discriminated against Romanian-speakers.^[8] ^[9]

The police investigation into the July 2004 disappearance of Sergei Gavrilov, who was imprisoned in Transnistria during the early 1990s and allegedly witnessed the mistreatment of members of the "Ilascu Group", was not solved. Transnistrian authorities have regularly harassed and often detained persons suspected of being critical of the regime for periods of up to several months. For example, Transnistrian authorities detained for several hours and reportedly abused two brothers, aged 12 and 15, who were the sons of a teacher at one of the Latin script schools in Transnistria. The Transnistria militia had reportedly explained they had detained the boys to clean the city of homeless people before the December legislative elections^[9].

According to the Moldavian and Romanian press, in February 2007, Transnistrian authorities destroyed and profaned the Dragalina cemetery in Tighina (also known as The Romanian cemetery), thus violating the Geneva Convention^[10]. The Transnistrian authorities did not exhume the bodies; they only removed the crosses and leveled the terrain with bulldozers. While according to the Romanian edition of Deutsche Welle, the Transnistrian authorities announced that the crosses will be smashed up with explosives and, in a mixture with asphalt will be used to repair the roads of the city, according to PMR News, the authorities in Transnistria are to reenter the exhumed soldiers outside of the city and authorities have taken steps so that the identities of exhumed soldiers are not lost. 319 identified Romanian and 14 unidentified soldiers, as well as 13 Soviet prisoners were buried at this cemetery.^[11]

In March 2007 Transnistrian authorities forbid a protest rally agains the regime and arrested several people who tried to organise the rally^[12]. In 19 March 2007 authorities arrested Ştefan Urîtu, head of Moldovan Helsinki Comitee for Human Rights, and 2 of his collaborators, despite the fact that Urîtu has a residence in Transnistria^[13]

[edit] Ilie Ilaşcu Group

A case of human rights violation is the arrest and trial of the leader of Christian Democratic Popular Party, Ilie Ilaşcu, who was arrested along with four other persons at their homes in Tiraspol in early days of June 1992. Ilie Ilaşcu, a politician who favoured Moldovan union with Romania, was sentenced to death by the Transnistrian government. He was released in 2001 amid international pressure.

In the case, they were charged with the murder of two "civil servants" and "terrorist crimes against PMR". In December 1993 Ilie Ilaşcu was sentenced to death for war crimes and terrorism. During the trial, he was kept in reinforced iron cages, as he was considered "extremely dangerous". This decision was contested by various international human rights organizations, which cast doubt upon the fairness of the trial. For years, he was kept in solitary confinement without access to family or to medical assistance.

He was eventually released in 2001, two years after he lodged an application with the European Court of Human Rights. He refused Moldovan president Vladimir Voronin's offer that he must abandon his lodged application with the European Court of Human Rights in exchange of the promised liberty of the other Romanians imprisoned in Transnistria.^{[citation needed]}

In the case of Ilaşcu and Others v. Moldova and Russia (2004), the judgement of the European Court of Human Rights found their detention arbitrary and it did not recognized the sentence. ^[14] It also demanded Moldova and Russia to take all necessary measures to put an end to the two Ilie Ilaşcu Group members, Andrei Ivanţoc and Tudor Petrov-Popa, still imprisoned in Transnistria.