Police and prosecutors most often violate legislation on assembly, NGO leaders

The police and the Prosecutor General’s Office are the institutions that most often break the legislation on public meetings, NGO leaders said Wednesday at a conference centering on the human rights and the situation of democratic institutions in Moldova after the April 5 elections, Info-Prim Neo reports. “After the law on assembly was adopted, the local public authorities do not ban the holding of meetings anymore. However, there are cases when the mayors do not authorize the meetings out of ignorance,” the executive director of Promo-Lex Association, lawyer Alexandru Postica said. A number of 180 peaceful rallies had been held after the adoption of the law until June 30. Most of them had an electoral character. “There are held few meetings that do not have an electoral charter. The people are afraid they will be detained by the police and ill-treated. “The most serious problem is that the police do not fulfill their obligations as regards the assemblies. During the April 6-7 events, the police did not intervene or intervened without a reason, incited the crowd and caused the devastation of the buildings (of the Presidential Office and the Parliament – e.n.). In some cases, the police arrested minors groundlessly,” Alexandru Postica said. Sergiu Ostaf, executive director of the Resource Center for Human Rights (CreDO), said that the local public administrations and the police are obligated to provide lighting and loudspeakers for protesters. “Yet, the access to sound is blocked or the sound is not adequately ensured,” he said. He stressed that the Prosecutor General’s Office also does not observe the law on assembly. It avoids investigating the cases when the police or other persons hinder the meetings. “When the right to assembly is violated, the Prosecutor’s Office should punish the persons that break the law. Probably, there is no political will and the importance of this fundamental right is not realized,” Ostaf said. The law on assembly was promulgated on April 21, 2008. It says that the persons that want to hold a meeting must only notify the local public authorities of the given territorial-administrative unit about this in written form at least five days before the event. No notification is needed in case of spontaneous meetings or meetings with a low number of participants.