Nistru war veterans separately honor memory of fallen comrades

As the former Russian president Boris Yeltsin signed the cease-fire convention, Russia confirmed the war from the Spring and the Summer of 1992 was a Moldovan-Russian war, stated the first Moldovan president Mircea Snegur at a meeting commemorating the heroes fallen in the fights on the Nistru, quoted by Info-Prim Neo. The meeting organized by the National Union of the Veterans of the Independence War (NUVIW,) took place at the “Eternitate” Memorial Complex on March 2, on the day when it was 16 years since the unleash of the military conflict on the Nistru. That day the breakaway forces attacked the Dubasari police commissariat. Mircea Snegur said that on March 2, 1992, Moldova became a UN member and namely that fact determined one of the greatest powers, which had and is having geopolitical interests here, to start a wicked war. According to him, Russia armed the separatists, trained them and on May 19 went to the battlefield with them. That tragic year, the blood of the heroes fallen for the country and nation shed the banks of the old Nistru, the first president said. „You should have no remorse that you could do more, - Mircea Snegur told the veterans. In the conditions in which we were absolutely not prepared for war, especially with such a power, lacking an army, you did everything you could to defend the country from an invasion. Thanks to you, Moldova remained undefeated by the Russian forces, by mercenaries and Cossacks, it remained an independent state, and the history is to give the due appreciations to the sacrifices brought about.” Chisinau’s mayor Dorin Chirtoaca said the day of March 2 started in 1992 and was going on now, as the country remained divided, and the ones who had fought for its integrity were not even treated as war veterans. The mayor says the solution for conciliation is in Chisinau. „In case we’ll create an attractive, developed, prosperous environment here, the citizens from Transnistria will want the country to be united. March 2 should be a day shedding light on our way together with other important dates in the nation’s history, helping us to preserve the integrity, dignity, intelligence,” Dorin Chirtoaca said. The NUVIW president, Eduard Maican, mentioned Moldova had entered that war without an army, but with people with enormous love for the country, the language and the tricolor flag. Without experience and without military equipment, the Moldovan police went to war, fighting the rebels massively supported by the 14 Russian Army, with its armament. Despite all that the war was not lost, Maican said. As the last year, the NUVIW president asked the leadership, the parliament to declare March 2 as the Remembrance Day. At the same time, Maican stated it was time to institute a museum of the heroes fallen in the war, and to erect monuments where the bloodiest fights had taken place and on the heroes’ tombs. It’s time to insure the due social protection for the families of the fallen, as well as for the living veterans. Those about 400 veterans participated in the memory March from the Great National Assembly Square to the Monument of the heroes fallen in the Independence War. They were joined only by the City Hall leadership, several MPs and local councilors, the heads of Chisinau’s district offices. Both the country’s leadership and the police ignored the activities organized by NUVIW. The Traffic Police did not insure the security of the participants in the commemoration march, they having to go close to the cars on roads. The mayor promised the combatants that gesture he described as „inhumane and illegal” of the police will be sued at law. Moreover there were no microphones at the meeting, as the police sequestered them a short time before it began. In the morning of the same day, members of the veterans union „St. George the Winner” came to the memorial accompanied by Premier Vasile Tarlev to lay flowers at the Heroes’ Monument. Previously that organization asked NUVIW not to organize the commemoration march and the meeting. A year ago, on March 2, 2007, the president of the veterans union „St. George the Winner”, Victor Alerguş, called for conciliation and for creating a single organization of the veterans in the Nistru War, “to become a force as in 1992, being of use to the country and managing many things to do for the living and for the ones in heavens.” At the commemoration ceremony, the Prime-Minister uttered a speech in front of the veterans from this union, saying „the Government, according to its possibilities, undertakes consistent measures to insure the social protection of the participants and of the families of the fallen in this conflict. The civic conscience obliges us to holy do our duty to stay near the nation’s heroes, to commemorate the acts of courage of the ones who wrote glorious pages in Moldova’s history.” According to statistics, 287 were killed, 40 were missing and other 3,500 people were mutilated in the Nistru War.