Activists protest in Chisinau because police arrested their leaders

Whistling and shouting “Down with dictatorship!” an initiative group self-styled as "The Union’s Council" protested on Wednesday, 9 April, before the premises of the Moldovan Ministry of Interior. According to the group’s leader, Ghenadie Brega, the protest actions are organized because, the police arrested two organizers at their meeting occasioned by the 90th anniversary of Basarabia’s unification with Romania, on March 27 this year. “We get up this protest meeting to see if anything has changed in the police management’s manners, or everything remained under Papuc’s influence,” Vasile Costiuc, a member of the initiative group "Sfatul Unirii " (The Union’s Council) has told Info-Prim Neo. A couple of seconds after the protest began, four people dressed in civil clothes, who did not produce any IDs, but said they were representatives of the Ministry of Domestic Affairs, have tried to obstruct the manifestation, claiming they have not observed the provisions of the City Hall’s authorization. According to those four, the Mayor’s authorization has been changed, yet they could not produce a copy. After the alleged representatives of the Ministry and the "Sfatul Unirii” members exchanged harsh words, the officer responsible for the public order of the Chisinau Police Commissariat, Iurie Crijanovschi, has shown the protesters the modified decision. According to it, the protest participants should have organized the meeting at a 50-meter distance from the Ministry’s building and not at 25 meters as the first authorization stipulated. The activists put up with the new order, resuming the protests at a 50-meter distance from the Ministry of Domestic Affairs. The move has lasted for about an hour, then the organizers suspended it vowing to resume it after 15.00, meanwhile calling on more colleagues to join in. A protester, Anatol Hristea-Stan, has said “the new Interior Minister only executes orders come from above, because the central authorities are disturbed by street protests”. The protest action was authorized by the Chisinau City Hall from 9.00 to 17.00.