“I was subjected to harsher pressure than that exerted by the Communists,” Anatol Bazgu, chairman of the Movement of Transnistrian Refugees, told a news conference on February 1. He said he was pressed by Chisinau councilors and officers of the Interior Ministry into not staging protests during Romanian President Traian Basescu's visit to Chisinau, Info-Prim Neo reports. “Before President Traian Basescu's visit, we announced we will welcome him, but will also hold protests during his visit. After a number of persons exerted pressure on us, we decided we will not stage protests, but will welcome Traian Basescu with flowers and warm words,” Bazgu said. Bazgu stressed that when Traian Basescu visited Chisinau in 2005, the refugees also took to the streets, but were not pressed so harshly by the then government. “We kept the place where we intended to protest secret, but the Ministry of the Interior, through the agency of a number of its employees who are members of the Movement, found out our plans and took steps to hinder us,” Anatol Bazgu said. The Movement's chairman also said that on the eve of Basescu's arrival in Moldova, he was phoned by Chisinau councilor Oleg Cernei and told not to protest. Cernei denied this assertion. “I might sue Oleg Cernei as he denied having phoned me on the television channel Moldova 1 and called me a liar,” Anatol Bazgu said. According to him, the public authorities were against the protests as they did not want the country's image to be damaged. Anatol Bazgu said the Ministry of the Interior remains politicized. “I think the public authorities should focus not on their image, but on the problems faced by the population,” he said. At the same time, Bazgu thanked the Chisinau councilors for approving the decision to distribute apartments in the building located on Nicolae Milescu Spataru St to 17 families of internally displaced people and to invalid veterans of the Special Police Brigade “Fulger”.