The parliamentary ombudspersons’ Center for Human Rights last year recorded fewer complaints from people about the use of torture and inhuman treatment. But, the fact that these complaints rank second among all the petitions received shows that the phenomenon of torture persists in Moldova, the ombudspersons say in a report on the observance of the human rights in 2013.

The parliamentary ombudspersons consider that such a state of affairs is due to the stepping up of the work of the National Mechanism for Torture Prevention. Other factors that led to this decrease include the creation of a Torture Combating Section at the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO), designation of specialized prosecutors at local prosecutor’s offices, and the setting up of a hotline for reporting cases of inhuman treatment at the PGO.

In order to combat the use of torture and inhuman treatment, the penitentiaries and police stations must be equipped with surveillance cameras, consider the ombudspersons.

As many as 227 preventive or monitoring visits were made last year within the National Mechanism for Torture Prevention. The police, penitentiaries, military units and psycho-neurological hospitals were the most visited institutions. The ombudspersons submitted ten applications for instituting legal or disciplinary proceedings. Consequently, the PGO started criminal cases based on two applications. Eight criminal cases over rape committed by a doctor at the Balti psycho-neurological hospital were started in one case. In the other case, legal action was taken over the ill-treatment of a detainee at the Chisinau Penitentiary No.13.

Thirty-two of the complaints submitted to the Center for Human Rights of Moldova last year concerned the use of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, 150 – problems related to the detention conditions in penitentiaries, 32 – the harming of personal dignity, while 10 – different problems regarding the observance of the detention or arrest procedure.