The Nistru war started through a provocation, veterans remember 16 year later

The Nistru war started through a challenge, and the real goal of the conflict was to plunder, veterans of the War for Moldova’s independence and integrity remember 16 years after the war started. This war was in Moldova not haphazardly, says reserve brig. general, Anton Gamurar, who was commanding the “Fulger” special troop brigade during the war. The language, history and politics were but pretexts to start the Nistru military conflict. The real goal was to plunder the wealth that was here when the Soviet Empire fell, as Moldova was one of the most prosperous republics. „The Moldovans could not go for work four years, and they still could afford everything. When we returned from war, the country was very poor,” the general says. He believes today’s politicians are ashamed to talk about this because many took part in making that wealth disappear. The general remembers every detail of those sad days. He says later in February 1992, the Tiraspol secret services, led by Moscow, organized a provocation – they liquidated the head of the Dubasari police, and then they incited the spirits, accusing the Moldovan party for killing the police major. On March 1, at night, the Dubasari police station was attacked, this being the last fort-post of the legal authorities on the left bank of the Nistru. The police did not open fire not to cause casualties, one of the Cossacks being killed by their own. 27 Moldovan police were taken to Tiraspol, maltreated, beaten and humiliated. They dressed them in bulletproof jackets and fired at them to see if the bullets would go through, says the general. It was namely then, on March 1, that the people from the village of Cocieri took to arms, ordinary people, not the police, neither the army which did not exist then, Anton Gamurar remembers. The people were coming from Corjova, Cocieri, Lunga, Malovata to defend the police (a paradox, civilians defending the police!) The people took to arms because they saw those humiliations, especially that the patriots from their villages who took the police’s part were treated with the same cruelty. Two female teachers were killed by mercenaries and thrown into a well. Thus the war started. The former combatant remembers that during the war, the Transnistrian people were asking them, eyes in tears, not to leave them and to defend them from the mercenary bandits. „We were policemen and could not commit crimes, as we knew we would be held responsible for our deeds, while the mercenaries, who had fought in more wars in the USSR’s area, were plundering, killing and did what they liked. A part of them remained on the Nistru’s banks, never returning home. The mercenaries were cruelly treating their comrades the same – loaded the corpses into trucks and threw them into the Nistru, didn’t even care to bury them. Like dogs,” says Anton Gamurar, an eye-witness of those events. The veteran is sure today no combatant from any of the banks would take to the arms, if a conflict had started. Because they don’t have what to defend. Because the newly rich won’t understand them. „They keep telling us the same: who sent you there? No question of patriotism, only of money gained with blood,” says the general. They talk a lot about patriotism today. But patriotism does not mean only words, but actions too, general Gгmurar underlines. Patriotism is leaving your family, children and going on the battlefield. Going to war conscientiously, knowing it may happen you can never see your children again. As was the case of Valentin Slobozenco and Ghenadie Yablochkin, whose children were born after their death. Now they are 16. How these children can explain the events that happened then and why the country does not honor its heroes, the former commander asks. The veterans awarded the Stefan cel Mare order now receive a monthly indemnity of 500 lei, yet the families of the fallen ones receive nothing, though the National Union of the Veterans of the Independence War keeps asking the authorities to do something. Neither the war veterans now working in law-enforcing structures receive this indemnity, on reason they are not retired yet. The veterans asked the country’s leadership to officially declare March 2 the Remembrance Day, in accordance with international norms. However the authorities keep silence.