Amnesty International Report 2006 - Moldova

Torture and ill-treatment in police custody were widespread. There were restrictions on freedom of expression and attempts to silence opposition politicians. The death penalty was completely abolished in law. Men, women and children were trafficked for forcible sexual and other exploitation. Two men continued to be arbitrarily detained in the self-proclaimed Dnestr Moldavian Republic.

Background

In March the ruling Communist Party of President Vladimir Voronin won parliamentary elections. The elections generally met standards set by the intergovernmental Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, election observers reported, but access to the media and to campaigning facilities favoured the government party. In February a joint Moldova Action Plan was signed with the European Union, setting objectives for further moves towards European integration.

Torture and ill-treatment in custody

On 30 June parliament amended the Criminal Code to make torture a criminal offence. Poor conditions of detention and ill-treatment in pre-trial detention facilities continued to be reported.

• Stela Draghici, who is registered blind, was transferred from a temporary detention centre operated by the police Department for Combating Organized Crime in Chiôinãu to a detention centre in Beltsy, a northern town. No allowances were made for her disability in either facility, for example in assisting her to the shower or toilets, resulting in bullying by other inmates. Repeated appeals by lawyers for an improvement to her detention conditions were ignored.

• Mikhail Kaldarar, Vasilii Kodrian, Anna Kodrian and Vyacheslav Pleshko were detained without charge or trial in the weeks following an armed police raid in the town of Yedintsy on 18 July to investigate a multiple murder in Chiôinãu. More than 30 Romani men and boys were allegedly arrested and beaten to force them to confess and to incriminate others. Mikhail Kaldarar was arrested on 18 July and detained for more than six weeks despite an order for his release by an appeal court in Beltsy on 25 July. Vasilii Kodrian was arrested on 5 August and detained without charge for over a month, allegedly because his son was a suspect. His wife, Anna, was arrested on 18 August and briefly detained. Vyacheslav Pleshko was arrested in Ukraine by Ukrainian and Moldovan police in late July or early August, forcibly returned to Moldova without any extradition proceedings, and detained at a temporary holding facility in Yedintsy until 4 September. All four were released without charge.

In a resolution adopted on 4 October, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe called on Moldova to continue the reform of law enforcement agencies and to considerably improve conditions of detention.

Freedom of expression

The threat of heavy fines for "moral damage" or "insulting the honour and dignity" of an individual (Article 16, Civil Code) was used in defamation cases brought against journalists and the media for publishing criticisms of politicians and officials.

• In April, Iurie Roôca, head of the Christian-Democrat People's Party and Deputy Speaker of Parliament, sued the Timpul de diminea÷a and Jurnal de Chiôinãu newspapers under Article 16 for 50,000 and 62,000 euros respectively in damages. They had published articles criticizing him.

• In October the European Court of Human Rights ruled that there had been a violation of the right to freedom of expression in the case of Julieta Savi÷chi, a correspondent of the Basapress news agency. She had been prosecuted for defamation for publishing an article about corruption in the traffic police.

Opposition politicians prosecuted

In its 4 October resolution, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe called for an investigation into the high number of court cases against leading opposition figures.

• Mihail Formuzal, Mayor of Ceadar Lunga in the Gagauz autonomous region, Chair of the opposition People's Republican Party, and a rival contestant to a ruling party incumbent for the regional governorship, faced criminal charges twice. In July he was tried for alleged abuse of office and acquitted. In October he was charged with misuse of funds.

• Georghe Straisteanu, a former member of parliament, founder of the first private television company in Moldova, and a well-known critic of government attacks on media freedoms, was detained with an employee on 22 July. He was charged with a series of large-scale thefts from cars, punishable by up to 25 years' imprisonment (Article 195, Criminal Code). His employee testified for the prosecution after allegedly being tortured. Acquitted and released on 18 August by the Central District Court of Chiôinãu, Georghe Straisteanu was reported to have been immediately redetained by police officers in defiance of a further court order on 19 August for his release. He remained in pre-trial detention until 17 November when he was released on bail on condition that he remain at his place of residence. At the end of 2005, the car thefts trial was still pending.

Death penalty

Moldova took further steps towards abolition of the death penalty in law. In September the Constitutional Court approved two amendments to the provision in the Constitution that had previously allowed for the death penalty in certain cases. Parliament was due to take a final decision in 2006.

Violence against women

In May, Moldova signed a Council of Europe declaration agreed by member states at a summit meeting in Warsaw that included a commitment to fight domestic and other forms of violence against women and children. Also in May, Moldova signed the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. On 20 October the Moldovan parliament adopted a law on trafficking.

Although Moldova reportedly increased the number of convictions for trafficking in human beings, protection for the victims of trafficking remained inadequate and the government did not implement a 1998 witness protection law. The main destinations were Cyprus, Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, according to a local human rights organization, La Strada. In most cases women were trafficked for sexual exploitation, but also sometimes for forced labour. Trafficked women were mainly seeking work abroad because of unemployment and domestic violence. Increasing numbers of children and men were trafficked.

Self-proclaimed Dnestr Moldavian Republic

The status of the Dnestr Moldavian Republic (DMR), an internationally unrecognized breakaway region, remained unresolved.

• Tudor Petrov-Popa and Andrei Ivan÷oc were still in detention in Tiraspol at the end of 2005, despite a July 2004 judgment by the European Court of Human Rights, which did not recognize their conviction by a court of the DMR and which found their detention to be arbitrary and in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. They were members of the "Tiraspol Six", who were sentenced to prison terms in 1993 for "terrorist acts", including the murder of two DMR officials. The four men convicted with them were released in 1994, 2001 and 2004.

The Criminal Code of the DMR retained the death penalty for six offences, but a moratorium on its use continued.