The former administration, especially ex-President Vladimir Voronin, are to blame for the April 2009 violence and torture. The accusations were made by Sergiu Ostaf, director of the Resource Center for Human Rights (CReDO), and Ludmila Popovici, director of the Rehabilitation Center for Torture Victims “Memoria”, in the program “Moldova live” on the public TV channel “Moldova 1”, IPN reports.

Sergiu Ostaf argued that the persons in that period were named to responsible jobs according to strict rules. “No person was appointed to responsible positions without the acceptance of Vladimir Voronin, while Papuc, Botnari and other key figures from the Ministry of the Interior were only marionettes in the hands of the then head of state. In the evening of April 7, the senior administration of Moldova was on the sixth floor of the Government Building and followed what was going on in the Great National Assembly Square, including the acts of the police,” stated the director of CReDO.

Sergiu Ostaf also said that the peaceful protests of April 7, 2009 deteriorated as a result of the intervention of special services of Russia, which pursued the goal of hampering any act of Chisinau aimed at coming closer to the EU. The Moldovan administration played the game of these services.

According to Ostaf, well-trained groups of instigators were infiltrated among the young people who took to the streets to protest against vote rigging expressed by the repression of the right to expression, monopolization of the mass media, and excessive politicization of the law enforcement bodies. At the order of the then power, the instigators made the peaceful protests to degenerate into violence.

In the same connection, Ludmila Popovici said the then Communist government resorted to such an act in order to remain in power, while the acts of mass torture were caused in order to direct society by terror.

Both Popovici and Ostaf said that the current administration of Moldova avoided holding accountable Vladimir Voronin and other leaders from the Communist Party in the hope that they will take part in the presidential elections, but then forgot about society, having the political career as priority.

In the same program, former Christian-Democratic MP Stefan Secareanu leveled criticism at his ex-party chief Iurie Rosca, whom he accused of writing Vladimir Voronin’s discourse of April 8, 2009, where Romania was groundlessly accused of coup attempt in Moldova.