The chairman of the public association Unirea-ODIP Vlad Biletski asks the Broadcasting Council to penalize NTV Moldova channel for misinformation and manipulation and to oblige this to offer the right of reply to representatives of the association.
In a news conference at IPN, Vlad Biletski said that NTV Moldova channel on November 30 broadcast a program by which it manipulated and disseminated falsehoods, replacing real deeds with untruths and own opinions. As a result, the public opinion was misled. A person watching this program could form the conclusion that the Heroes Cemetery situated on Decebal Blvd has nothing to do with Romania and the Romanians and is a Russian cemetery as the first soldier buried there was of Russian origin.
The leader of Unirea-ODIP said there is no evidence that would substantiate the assertions of the program’s author. A cemetery is set up based on several graves, not one grave. The program author neglected historical facts showing the constructions there were the result of the efforts made by the Romanian administration. “When this piece of land was a Russian province, not even a stone was laid there and the Romanian administration was the only one that took care of the soldiers who died during World War I and World War II.”
According to Vlad Biletski, the author of the program overlooked the fact that the Soviet administration destroyed this cemetery, specifying only that a hospital was erected instead of the cemetery, but didn’t say at what time the hospital was built and that this happened after the graves were leveled with bulldozers, with the memory and honor of the soldiers buried there being profaned. “The big chauvinist heroes, the big pro-Russian heroes falsify history and lie shamelessly. They do not have proofs and concrete documents.”
Vlad Biletski also said that a number of unionist associations, including Unirea-ODIP, marked the territory with the aim of taking care of this cemetery. The author of the program forgot to mention that President Igor Dodon, who is supported by NTV Moldova, was the one who allocated money from the state reserve for demolishing the hospital built following the demolition of the cemetery.
Gennady Cosovan, chairman of the association “Credință Patriei” (“Faith to the Motherland”), said that over 500 Romanian soldiers and more than 200 Russian soldiers were buried at the cemetery situated on Decebal Blvd. “What is most annoying is the fact that the feature smelt of chauvinism, bolshevism that has revived in our society after 30 years,” he stated.
The public association Unirea-ODIP requests the Broadcasting Council to oblige NTV Moldova to given them the right of reply the same day the program was broadcast, at the same hour and in the same amount of airtime.