Civil society represented by the National Platform of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum and other organizations express their concern about the unprecedented attacks on the NGOs, the development partners and democracy staged by MP Bogdan Țîrdea. In a statement, the signatories say that these attacks consist in the discrimination, based on fake reports and defamatory accusations, against civil society in general and the organizations that work in the fields of human rights, justice sector reform, corruption fighting, freedom of the press, pro-European reforms and reforms in the social and medical spheres in particular, IPN reports.
“Beyond the figures and false information disseminated about the NGOs that he attacked to support his theses and, even if he pretends that he carried out a study of civil society in the Republic of Moldova, MP Bogdan Țîrdea made no reference to the so-called “charity foundations” of the politicians who became involved in the electoral campaigns of these. Even the wife of President Igor Dodon runs such a foundation and it is hard to believe that a serious scientific research could have ignored it,” says the statement.
The organizations note that the launch of the so-called books in a news conference during the election campaign, not long before the presidential elections, also plays the role of a diversion so as to distract public attention from the recent investigations featuring President Igor Dodon that appeared in the mass media and to engage civil society in the political fight against its will.
According to the signatures, the civil society organizations receive foreign financing to promote democracy and the human rights as long as these areas are insufficiently functional in Moldova. The civil society is a necessary condition of a democracy wherever in the world. If the citizens cannot form associations and struggle for themes that preoccupy them, there is no democracy in that country.
The signatory NGOs ask Parliament, the Government and President Igor Dodon, the PSRM and other politicians to distance and detach themselves from the manipulations of Socialist MP Bogdan Țîrdea and not to encourage or undertake them. They also request the political class to stop the attacks and defamation against civil society. “Not the NGOs keep the Republic of Moldova in poverty and underdevelopment, but namely those who oppose democratization, the justice sector reform, the fight against corruption, the respect for the human rights and freedoms.”
The statement was signed by 92 members of the National Platform of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum and also by Amnesty International Moldova, RISE Moldova, AO “Media Alternativa”, the Institute of Oral History of Moldova, Mold-Street.com, the Human Rights Embassy and Moldova.org.
