Fourteen years have passed since the April 7, 2009 events when a large-scale protest was staged in central Chisinau. The protest involved mainly young people who took to the streets to express their dissatisfaction with the results of the April 5 parliamentary elections in which a majority of votes was won again by the Party of Communists. The protest resulted in a number of victims among civilians and police officers. Only one death was officially confirmed, of Valeriu Boboc, who was beaten in the Great National Assembly Square, IPN reports.
After the Central Election Commission made public the first official results of the April 5 parliamentary elections, which showed that the ruling Party of Communists obtained a majority in Parliament for the third consecutive time, a protest was organized by calls through the Internet and social networking sites. The protest expanded when a number of parties joined in and more than 30,000 persons, supporters of the opposition, took to the streets of Chisinau on April 7 to challenge the Communists’ victory in elections.
The peaceful protests degenerated into violence that ended with forced entries and serious damaging of the Parliament Building and the Presidential Office, arrests and victims. The various attempts made to investigate the circumstances and identity the organizers of the violent events didn’t produce results under the Communist rule and later, when power was taken over by democratic coalitions.
According to data of the Prosecutor’s Office, after the events of April 2009, persons who allegedly suffered as a result of the police actions filed 77 complaints. The prosecutors themselves examined 31 cases. A number of 71 criminal cases were started as a result and 42 of them concerned the use of torture. Another 19 cases referred to abuse of power or abuse of office and ten to other categories of offenses.
Later, representatives of civil society organizations issued a note, saying that the April 7, 2009 case failed. All the persons holding responsible posts were acquitted or the charges against them were dropped. Over 600 persons were ill-treated, arrested and beaten cruelly in April 2009. These didn’t benefit from fair trials. They were held in inhuman conditions, without water and food. At least five persons died in suspicious conditions, but the authorities assumed only one death.
The European Court of Human Rights convicted Moldova in eight cases concerning the April 7, 2009 event. Another over 40 applications are being examined.
The Party of Communists, which was in power at that time, came with a comment, saying that “exactly 14 years ago, Moldova set off on a road of full degradation, ignoring of the legal principles of state functioning, limitation of the democratic freedoms and gradual elimination of the own sovereignty. Today, no one wants to make effort to find out who was behind the events of April 7, 2009. The commissions created to investigate the events of April 7, 2009 ended their activities without presenting any result. Their goal was to discredit the Communist government, but the real facts haven’t confirmed these mythological versions.”
