Reform needed to guarantee that people in Moldova will never again be tortured or killed, Kalman Mizsei

“Torturing of many young people (in detention) is something that should never happen again. We need to understand how it happened, all the institutional and personal responsibilities, and Moldova needs to reform the system in the way that it guarantees that people in this country will never again be tortured or killed”, said EU Special Representative for Moldova Kalman Mizsei, in reference to last April's events, in an interview offered to the agency Info-Prim Neo. Speaking about the results expected from the commission that investigates the April events, Kalman Mizsei said things should be examined in a careful and balanced manner. “We advocated as full as possible investigation of the chain of events by the Parliament, with the involvement of experts from other European countries. The aim of this investigation should not be witch hunting and not be used for narrow purposes of political propaganda, but for the purposes of the political class to come together to avoid such dramatic clashes that occurred and that ultimately also resulted in a loss of life”, said Kalman Mizsei. “I don’t think the results are late”, says the EU Special Representative. “You had a very intense period of political fight and it is good that the State Committee in the previous political cycle did not rush with conclusions. You know we urged at that time President Voronin to be inclusive, hence our idea of a parliamentary commission. The current commission, in our strong view, should work on the basis of the principles I articulated above and instead of rushing into results should be very considerate in its analysis and be led by the general purpose of political reconciliation. What I find good is that two such consummate party warriors as Mr. Nagachevschi and Mr. Mishin have visibly found common sense and common language in the way they are managing the process. However, the difficulties are coming when they will have to present results, particularly if those will be premature. I am also worried by the fact that rush has caused that European experts have not yet participated – though I also need to admit that the international community should also be a bit more agile in its responses to Moldova’s needs, including for foreign experts in this case. As you know I urged this participation as early as mid-April last year!” “There is one area, where the commission needs to be particularly thorough and that is the human rights abuses in the detention centers after April 7. Torturing many young people there is something that should never happen again. We need to understand how it happened, all the institutional and personal responsibilities and Moldova needs to reform the system in the way that it guarantees that people in this country will never again be tortured or killed. This is an elementary European humanitarian norm and no compromise can soften or politicize the finding of the parliamentary Commission in this area”, stated Kalman Mizsei. He said the European Union and the Council of Europe are involved in providing assistance to the special parliamentary commission. “As I said we discussed first with Mr. Voronin while he was the President and he asked us to offer international expertise. Our position is that both, the events on and after April 7 deserve careful analysis. The European Commission has earmarked financial resources for the purposes of supporting the work of the parliamentary commission and asked the Council of Europe to implement this support. A delegation is going to arrive from the Council of Europe this month and this issue then could be discussed. But I know that the idea of the parliamentary commission is to finish its deliberation soon, so there may not be room for this help now. We shall see the results; if the commission is able to produce something that both, helps society to understand what happened in those days and also helps healing the wounds and create a more united political elite then all the better. If not, perhaps it would be best if the commission was still to resort to European expertise. It would be too bad if this opportunity to improve the quality of Moldovan democracy was wasted. Many things happened there that should not repeat themselves. Here the quality of the findings is much more important than rushing to results that may only be motivated by the expectation to make short term propaganda gains”, stated Kalman Mizsei in his interview with Info-Prim Neo. Kalman Mizsei was appointed EU Special Representative for Moldova on March 1, 2007 for a three-year term. Recently, the Council of the EU prolonged his term in office until August 31, 2010.