Experts discuss drawbacks of Moldovan law in relation to people missing after conflicts

Lacking a law on the people missing after military or other types of conflicts is a legal shortcoming in Moldova, and was discussed on June 9 at a round table in Chisinau, Info-Prim Neo reports. The discussion was about the missing people from the Nistru war in 1992. The attendees have mentioned the need to draft a law to establish a legal status for the missing people, a mechanism to seek them and the protect relatives' rights. Stefan Uratu, the president of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, says he knew personally many people reported as missing. “Anatolie Jivotcov and Alexei Conovalov, both members of the human rights committee from Transnistria,” he exemplified. “Anatolie Jivotcov disappeared on March 6, 1992. We found he was taken by the Transnistrian militsia, and was set free 72 hours later, I saw his signature. But we know nothing about him,” said the committee president. About Alexei Conovalov, Uratu says he was arrested in March by “the State Security Ministry of the would-be Transnistrian republic.” He was held in jails in Slobozia town, then in Tiraspol and only on September 15, 1992, he was found in a well in Copanca village. “Certainly dead, with signs of severe violence,” Stefan Uratu specified. The chairman of the Constitutional Court (CC), Dumitru Pulbere, has said that although seemingly the CC has no relation to the topic in question, it's only the CC supervising the execution of the constitution by all the state bodies, and it often happens that the Legislature or the Government adopt decisions which affect the human rights. “This issue is interesting for me as a judge of the Constitutional Court, because sooner or later they will dart a law and it will need to match the Constitution and the fundamental human rights,” Pulbere said. The round table has been organized by the National Consulting Committee for Enforcing Human Law, the regional delegation of the International Red Cross committee, based in Moscow, the Free International University from Moldova (ULIM) and the Human Rights Association from Moldova.