Authorities must not use security problems to restrict citizen freedoms - Louis O’Neill

The democratic and civil oversight of the security sector is not only a mechanism for increasing the efficiency of the security policies to prevent conflicts, promote peace and democracy, but also a security measure, especially for the states that experienced totalitarian regimes, against their use as instruments of abuse, violence or suppression of the human rights. This statement was made by Speaker Marian Lupu during the seminar “Democratic Oversight of the Security Sector”, held on Wednesday, February 21. As he said, “although it is with good reason that the functional fulfilment of the state’s policies is deemed as the Government’s exclusive prerogative, yet one should not overlook the Parliament’s status of the highest authority representing the people’s will”. For his part, the head of OSCE Mission to Moldova Louis O'Neill mentioned that the issues related to security and defence also require confidentiality to a certain extent, but abuses in the case of some sensible problems should not be admitted. “Sometimes governments use this sector as pretext to gain more control and restrict citizen freedoms”, he said. At the same time, the ambassador mentioned that the general public has to trust the leadership when it comes to information issues. In order to gain this trust, people must participate in fair and equitable elections; Government and Parliament must be frank, so that everybody knows what is happening and has no doubts about what is happening behind the scenes; civil servants should be sincere and honest; corruption must be insistently combated, and it should be proved that everybody has equal rights etc. MPs, representatives of the civil society and international organisations attended the conference. The Seminar “Democratic Oversight of the Security Sector: Revision of Documents related to Defence and Security” is organised by the Centre for European Security Studies, Netherlands, the European Institute for Political Studies and the Public Policy Institute, Moldova.