Meeting commemorating deported victims organized in Chisinau

The Association of Formerly Deported Persons and Political Prisoners of Moldova (AFDDPM) has organized, on Tuesday, June 13, in the Square of the railway Station, a meeting commemorating the deported victims. The action was organized on the occasion of marking 65 years since the first mass deportation of Moldovans, organized by the Soviet Communist regime. The representatives of the local public administration, ex-deported persons, writers, deputies, as well as priests of the church „Sfanta Teodora de la Sihla” participated at the event. AFDDPM chairman Valentina Sturza highlighted at the beginning of the meeting that the leadership of RM: President Vladimir Voronin, the prime minister Vasile Tarlev and the speaker Marian Lupu were as well invited at the event, but none of them responded to the invitation. „Probably, they did not want to take part at the meeting as they are tortured by remorse because of not having solved our problems,” Sturza mentioned. The formerly deported persons state that the central authorities do not provide them with assistance, more than this, they feel treated „as enemies”. The interim mayor of Chisinau Vasile Ursu said in his speech that the municipality will offer 500 lei to every deported person of the municipality, which will present an application in this regard. He shares the opinion that the society owes more than this to these persons, as, Ursu noted, “not the thieves and the robbers were deported, but good-will persons”. Referring to the postponing the construction of a monument in memory of Stalinist repression victims, instead of the rock of the square from the Railway Station, the interim mayor said that not only the municipality is to be blamed, but as well as the ex-deported persons who did not address any proposal to the mayoralty regarding the edification of the monument. According to official reports, in the middle of the night between June 12 and 13, 1941, 13.470 families, amounting to 22.648 persons, of whom about two thirds children and women were arrested and sent to gulags. Several historians named these events as “a real Holocaust for Romanians, organized by the soviet communist regime”.