Three rehabilitation, legal and psychological assistance centers for torture victims were opened in Chisinau, Comrat and Tiraspol with the financial assistance of the European Union. The total cost of the project is over €700,000, IPN reports.

At the centers, the victims of torture will be offered expert legal advice and psychological assistance individually and in a group with the relatives, acquaintances or family. The final goal of the initiative is to reintegrate the victims into society, the family and work.

Within the same project, over 60 seminars will be staged for personnel of penitentiary detention centers and psychiatric hospitals for raising awareness of the responsibility for use of torture and for persons who serve time in jail or receive treatment at these institutions so as to teach them methods of opposing torture.

Marco Gemmer, Deputy Head of the Operations Section at the EU Delegation to Moldova, said the studies carried out in 2017 and in the case of Andrei Braguta showed that the problem of torture and inhuman treatment continues to exist in Moldova. The project is implemented in partnership by the Institute for Democracy, the Media Center of Transnistria and the National Institute for Women of Moldova. In general, the idea of the project is to change the mentality of all the involved players.

Luiza Doroshchenko, head of the Media Center of Transnistria, said the three centers started work two months ago. The beneficiaries in Tiraspol hesitate to use the services of the local center as they don’t know about the possibilities of obtaining assistance or do not believe that someone can help them.

According to Andrei Borshvschi, chairman of the Board of the Institute for Democracy of Comrat, said the goal is to create a network of NGOs that will later implement projects to fight torture in their regions. A program of sub-grants was launched to allocate up to €7,000 for relevant projects of NGOs.