Opposition MPs indignant at recent violation of press freedom

A number of opposition parliamentarians, during the Parliament’s sitting of April 24, expressed concern as to the recent cases of violating the freedom of the press and of speech, Info-Prim Neo reports. Uttering the statement of the Moldova Noastra Alliance (AMN), MP Gheorghe Susarenco has pointed out the recent attacks on the local media. According to Susarenco, last week the Local Public Administration Minister, Valentin Guznac, sent all the district presidents, the mayor of Balti and the Gagauz Governor a letter asking for contacts and data of the local media, while a month ago, the Ministry asked its territorial subdivisions as much as possible information about the local media and their funding sources. “We get more and more information that the teams of local newspapers are intimidated by officers of the Security and Information Service, as happened in Causeni and in other districts,” said the AMN parliamentarian. According to him, the Court of Accounts last week launched a massive attack on the media outlets in all the districts concomitantly. As instructed by the President, the Court of Accounts, defying the Constitution and the law, leaving apart all its planned checkups, has started a witch-hunt in all the country’s editorial boards, “finding fault, by any means”, especially, with journalists expressing viewpoints not matching the ones of the present rulers, Gheorghe Susarenco stated. Other opposition MPs have spoken about freezing the bank accounts of Jurnal de Chisinau. The sequester applied by the court shows once again that the Moldovan justice is not independent, said MP Ion Neagu. He has asked to call in the Justice Minister to provide explanations concerning the lawsuit of the publication filed by a former prosecutor. Yet the Communist majority declined the proposal. National-Liberals’ president Vitalia Pavlicenco has said “abusively sequestering the accounts of a prestigious newspaper in Moldova shows that the mafia Communist group is agonizing and transformed the state institutions into pressure tools against bearers of opinion contradicting the criminal ruling clan, which illegally functions in the form of a Communist party within the state, tolerated only because having repressive bodies and law-enforcing entities.” The Centru Court from Chisinau froze the bank accounts of Jurnal de Chisinau, after the newspaper was sued by a former prosecutor, for alleged slander. Newspaper director Val Butnaru says the writ is a political order.