Who is responsible for the forced entry of the police at radio “Antena C”, and for the actions considered illegal? Info-Prim Neo investigation

After two days and two nights of maximal alert in the proximity of the city hall, with an alleged bomb alert, with the unfolding of significant police staff and the forced evacuation of journalists from the “Antena C” radio station, on the morning of Monday, December 18, the interim mayor Vasile Ursu told reporters that he knows nothing of what had happened. Info-Prim Neo reporter tried to investigate who, according to the law, had the right to make decisions of the kind that were taken in the case of the municipal radio station. The procedure unfolded some other resources and methods used by the state and local authorities, which the interviewed experts qualified as “illegal pressures on the team of “Antena C”. [Is it possible that the interim mayor did not know that the policemen were fighting the journalists?] The former chief of the municipal police, Stefan Varlan, told the agency that the patrol and sentinel regiment SCUT could only have been involved in this scandal with indications from superiors, in this case from the General Police Commissariat and the municipal police. The maintenance of public order in the capital city is carried out in strict coordination with the local public authorities, in which case, the statement made by the interim mayor, Vasile Ursu, that he knew nothing about the implication of police in the case of “Antena C”, are doubtful to say the least, says Varlan. According to the cited source, the alleged bomb alert at the “Antena C” headquarters and the forced evacuation of the staff is a well known procedure to the police bodies, and they use it whenever they need to “clear” the field. He admits that the police recording tape may have a certain phone call about a bomb, but the fact that the person who made the call is not being looked for proves that it was a set up. Moreover, Varlan claims that there is a behaviour regulation in cases such as this one, which stipulates the involvement of sappers, or the emergency service. Speaker Marian Lupu, referring to this “bomb” during the annual conference “Cooperation between the Parliament and the Civil Society” said that “it is rather strange” that the necessary services in finding and neutralizing the bomb were not involved. [Experts doubt the technical deficiencies of the radio relay] On Saturday, at 16.50, during the Open Doors Day, in the middle of a talk-show which debated issues linked to the reorganization of the station, the broadcasting signal was disrupted under the pretext of a function failure of all the transmitters. The reason invoked in the last instance by the technical director of the State Enterprise “Radiotelecomunicatii”, Veaceslav Pascal refers to a defection of the new digital equipment, which ensures the national network and can only be repaired in Israel. The authorization for the transportation to Israel and the crossing of borders of the equipment could take at least a few weeks, time in which the networks in Causeni, Straseni and Mandresti will not receive signal from the radio station “Antena C”. According to an official letter from SE ”Radiotelecomunicatii”, the disruption of the broadcasting signal at “Antena C” radio station is due to “deficiencies of the technical circuit equipment”. The simultaneous malfunction of all the transmitters is very strange, claimed one expert in telecommunications, on condition of anonymity. According to him, on Saturday and Sunday, too many coincidences happened to make the claim about the technical deficiency credible. At the same time, the expert claims that, if during 4 days the deficiency was not eliminated, than this is the result of orders received from someone. Solicited by Info-Prim Neo, the doctor in physical sciences, Stefan Uratu, said that he researched this problem, as president of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Moldova (CHDOM). The expert claims that the failure was invented and admits that the order to disrupt the transmission could have been given by the interim mayor Ursu himself. Uratu mentioned that the piece that was claimed defective by “Radiotelecomunicatii” has a few hundred channels, of which only 3 are used – by Radio Moldova, “Antena C” and “Serebreannai Dojdi”. Had there been a desire to restart the transmission of “Antena C”, other channels could have been activated, says the cited source. Uratu says that the disruption Antena C’s transmission expresses a vital interest from the state. As regards the bodies or people who have the right to order the disruption of a radio station’s signal, he listed the State Security Superior Council in case a radio station instigates to violence and war, the Prosecution Office, judicial institutions, but in all these cases, it is done through a mandatory informing of the society. On Tuesday, CHDOM asked the Parliament to form a joint commission made of representatives from Parliament factions and the civil society to verify the causes of the technical faults. [Authorities are using human resources and the materials of a public institution] Asked by journalists, interim mayor Vasile Ursu initially stated that the new managers of the municipal stations were appointed by the Municipal Council, and then made a “rectification”, specifying that the CMC delegated him the right to find and name administrators. He “found them and named them” in the morning following the CMC session in which the previous directors had been sacked. Asked how he managed to find candidates so quickly, Ursu answered: “Why, are they so hard to find?” On the same day, according to a number of employees at “Antena C”, the new administrator, Veaceslav Satnic, brought a number of colleagues from the public institution “Teleradio-Moldova” who were meant to replace the journalists from the municipal radio station. Lucia Culev, presenter at “Antena C” told the agency that in the night from Saturday to Sunday, she insisted to enter the headquarters of the radio station to take the medicine and diary that she had forgotten in the studio. “I was surprised to see an unknown woman and three unknown men in the studio, one of whom was teaching her how to operate the studio mixer”. According to the journalist, the following day, one of the men presented himself as a municipal councillor. Valeria Vitu, reporter at Radio Free Europe, said during “the Hour of Moldova” that she called “Antena C” on the news desk’s number – 22-96-92, where she heard a woman’s voice who introduced herself “Rodica, the new employee”. Furthermore, on Friday, when the staff of “Antena C” was still unaware of who would take the director’s chair, the employee of the “Teleradio-Moldova” company, Gheorghe Maret, the personal chauffer of Satnic, looked for his boss at “Antena C”. Throughout the day, the car belonging to “Teleradio-Moldova” was parked in front of the station’s headquarters while Satnic was inside. Info-Prim Neo reporter could not find out if and when Satnic had been released from the function of head of the news desk at Radio Moldova, because for 2 days, the numerous phone calls to the chief of the staff service of TRM, Petru Sinica, were not answered. The employees of this service refused to give information, explaining that this is only of Sinica’s competence. [Sad conclusions on what the authorities think] Chairman of the Independent Press Association Petru Macovei told the agency that guilty for the existing conflict are the CMC and, implicitly, CCA who put pressure on the CMC and started the media institutions’ crisis. Macovei claims that it is normal for the press to be privatized, but not using such methods. The cited source doubts Ursu’s statements that he had no knowledge of the bomb alarm and the police involvement in the case of “Antena C”, as well as the utilization of administrative resources. According to Macovei, the police could not have acted without having an order from the city hall. “The statements of the interim mayor that he had not known anything about the forced intervention of the police just a few meters from the headquarters of the city hall are all lies”, says Macovei. “The authorities either consider us stupid people who don’t understand anything, or are making a statement that in this country there are two types of people – the ones who choose the methods and the ones that have to swallow them, even though they are antidemocratic and illegal”, says IPA chairman. “All of these stratagems from the authorities do not mean that the people do not realize what is happening around the municipal media institutions”, said Macovei. Chairman of the Coordinating Council of the Audiovisual (CCA) Corneliu Mihalache specified that in case the reason behind the disruption of a radio station’s transmission is different from a technical one, its license can be withheld for 72 hours. “Because the reason behind the disruption of Antena C’s transmission is a technical one, fact confirmed by IS “Radiocomunicatii”, according to the Audiovisual Code, the license holder has 45 days to remedy the situation”, Mihalache told reporters.