Chisinau City Hall accused of numerous human rights abuses

The Chisinau City Hall has many a time violated the human rights by prohibiting public meetings, the representatives of a number of nongovernmental organisations said at the public debate “Challenges of Peaceful Assembly in Moldova”, held Friday, May 11. Director executive of the Resource Centre for Human Rights (CReDO), Sergiu Ostaf, said the idea of holding public discussions on this subject generated from the alarming situation concerning the freedom of peaceful assembly in the last few years. Tens of cases of banning public meetings by the Chisinau City Hall showed that the city authorities have a selective manner in choosing organisers of demonstrations. In addition, the public discussion was occasioned by the recently published Guidelines on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly, drafted by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights OSCE/ODIHR. For his part, Evgheni Golosceapov, director executive of Amnesty International Moldova (AIM), stated that the past year saw plenty of violations of freedom of assembly and, consequently, of human rights. Those several court judgements that found the City Hall guilty of human rights abuses left its leadership indifferent. “They just make fun of these decisions”, he said, underlining that “restricting the freedom of assembly is a way to oppress citizens”. In addition, Golosceapov stated that the Chisinau City Hall barred a public march on Victory Day, May 9, as part of which AIM members planned to gather signatures for supporting women who suffered in armed conflicts, and for congratulating IIWW veterans. ”The freedom of assembly is a key guarantee of the civil society’s development, for this liberty allows expressing disagreement collectively and publicly, drawing attention to the committed abuses and their combating. The interdictions to hold meetings are repressive measures, meant to undermine the civil society, to discourage the active expression of the civic position”, Evgheni Golosceapov stated. The GenderDoc-M organisation’s representative Dana Cotici asserts that the City Hall always refuses this organisation to hold meetings. In the last three years alone this organisation was refused six times, two times this May. Dana Cotici says that City Hall does not react to the court decisions and it is time to change the legislation regarding public meetings, to organise a joint action of all the organisations fighting for human rights to draw authorities’ attention to the deplorable situation in this field. Representatives of a large number of NGOs, including the League for the Defence of Human Rights, Promolex, Young & Free, and Lawyers for Human Rights participated in the public discussion.