Representatives of the Parents Committee of the private Theoretical Lyceum “”Orizont” ask to examine all the circumstances of the September 6 expulsion of seven teachers of Turkish origin who worked at this lyceum and to stop such practices that, according to them, damage the country’s image. In a petition addressed to the country’s administration, which was presented in a news conference at PN, the Parents Committee requests to open an inquiry and identify the functionaries who committed a number of violations. The petition is addressed to the Speaker of Parliament Andrian Candu, Prime Minister Pavel Filip, head of the Parliament’s commission on national security, defense and public order Eugen Carpov, chief of the Security and Intelligence Service Vasile Botnari and people’s ombudsman Mihail Cotorobai.

“On May 31, 2018, during a service trip made by the director general Turgay Șen to Bucharest, he was arrested at the airport and this made him file an applicant for asylum. After this attempt to send him back by force, another 12 teachers filed an application for asylum. On September 6, 2018, seven teachers were taken by force from their homes, damaging the entrance doors, from inside the school or while they were going to work, being taken away by car, without any explanation and identification papers, by officers of the Security and Intelligence Service of the Republic of Moldova. These persons, in the afternoon of the same day, were handed over to the Turkish authorities,” said Valentina Curechi, a teacher of “Orizont”, reading the petition.

The petition says that five of the seven teachers had a temporary identity document of asylum seeker and were waiting for an administrative decision. On September 10, 2018, the wives of these men received by mail the decision to declare  the persons undesirable and the decision to reject the application for asylum. There was the stamp of Moldova’s Post Office on the envelope, dated September 7, 2018, while the issuing authority was the Bureau for Migration and Asylum of the Ministry of the Interior. The SIS press release notes these persons were handed over to the Turkish authorities for the reason that they are supporters of an Islamic organization. There were provided no other explanation and no trial was held to prove their blame.

“We remind that after the failed putsch in Turkey of July 15, 2016, the Turkish authorities have exerted pressure on the state bodies of the Republic of Moldova through the National Security Service of Turkey and the Embassy of Turkey in the Republic of Moldova so that the teachers of Turkish origin who are suspected of links with the Hizmet movement were handed over to Turkey and the education institution was closed or transfer to the pro-governmental Turkish foundation “Maarif”. After the Ambassador of Turkey in the Republic of Moldova made the first offensive statements, saying this institution trains terrorists who are infiltrated into the state bodies, without making any difference, which is he called all our children terrorists, we filed a petition to Prime Minister Pavel Filip, but we didn’t get an answer to this,” reads the petition.

The Representatives of the Parents Committee of the private Theoretical Lyceum “”Orizont” in the petition enumerate a number of moments that they consider illegal, namely: arrest of the persons without informing them about the reason; violation of the right to defense; banning of access to a lawyer; damaging of private property in the absence of an arrest warrant, and banning of access to the family members after the arrest. According to the Committee’s representatives, the seven teachers weren’t communicated the decisions about their declaring as undesirable, these being sent by mail after they were expelled to Turkey. They were also deprived of the right to challenge the given decisions in court and weren’t told about the rejection of the application for asylum, these decision also being sent by mail, after the teachers were expelled. The right to freedom, the right to choose the destination country in case of a return and other rights stipulated in the national legislative documents and international conventions to which the Republic of Moldova is a party were also violated.