Representatives of ethnic minorities accused the Moldovan authorities of not ensuring conditions for their integration into society and of not taking into account their opinions concerning particular social problems. The accusations were made in the program “Fabrika” on Publika TV channel, IPN reports.
The head of the Bulgarian community in Moldova Fiodor Sabii said the Bulgarian minority represents a force of stability in southern Moldova. The Bulgarians do not want autonomy, but they want Taraclia to be kept as a district. “We want to coexist peacefully within the sovereign and independent state Moldova. But the authorities do not take the opinions and wishes of the ethnic minorities into consideration and do not want to look for solutions to our problems. During 23 years, no government consulted the people. Let’s take the Association Agreement with the EU, which caused controversy in southern Moldova. If the state administration had discussed this document with the people, this tense situation wouldn’t have existed today. Or the studying of the official language. I personally asked implementing a program for studying the Romanian language in the Bulgarian settlements, but the authorities did nothing. Russian is the language of study for the Bulgarian community,” he stated.
Olga Gonchearova, who heads the Peoples’ Union of Moldova, also considers that the Moldovan authorities ignore the problems and wishes of the ethnic minorities. “Our attempts to state our opinions are often perceived as separatist. The ethnic minorities are discriminated. The Romanian language is taught to speakers of other languages by the methodology used to teach the Romanian speakers. In many settlements inhabited by other ethnic groups, there are no teachers of Romanian. The state should not forget that many famous persons who did good things for this country were from ethnic minorities,” she said.
Head of the National Roma Center Nicolae Radita also expressed his dissatisfaction with the authorities’ inaction. “There are many problems related to the education for ethnic minorities. Schools are being closed in villages that are densely populated by minorities. Children who studied for many years in Ukrainian are forced to study in Russian or Romanian. The platforms of the election runners contain nothing about the problems of the ethnic minorities,” he said.
The representative of the Jewish community Ian Feldman said that the number of actions of an anti-Semitic character has increased in Moldova, but the authorities do not react. “The attack on the Jewish holiday Hanukah, the construction of a laundry house near the monument to victims of the Holocaust, the recent protests with slogans insulting the Jews and other events aimed against our community are rather serious, but the authorities take no attitude,” he stated.
