UN questions Moldova human rights record

In August at Geneva's "Palais Wilson" UN building, the spotlight will be put on Moldova's human rights failings

GENEVA (Tiraspol Times) - The United Nations is worried about Moldova and the country's poor performance when it comes to human rights.

Moldova has been summoned to Geneva for a human rights review which will take place at the city's historic Palais Wilson building. It is home to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), a department of the United Nations Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland. During sessions scheduled for 10 August and 13 August 2007, the UN's human rights specialists will be asking tough questions related to Moldova's mistreatment of ethnic minorities.

The sessions are scheduled by the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and experts are worried that only the view of the Moldovan government itself is taken into account. No third party report has yet been made available and representatives from Transdniestria have not been invited. Nor are independent NGOs or victims' groups allowed to present evidence of Moldova government abuse.

" - One of the fundamental problems with all human rights regimes of this kind is that they have been forced to rely on information coming from the States themselves," says Joshua Castellino, a law professor at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, and Adjunct Professor of Law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, in Galway, Ireland.

He alerts of a loophole which has been used in the past by countries with less-than-stellar human rights records:
" - Many countries signed up to these standards and failed to produce any reports. As a result it was not really possible to monitor the extent to which they were fulfilling their legal obligations. Thus, the best way to dispel attention from its track record was for a State to simply ignore the legal obligation to report."

What the UN wants to know

The Tiraspol Times & Weekly Review has obtained an advance copy of the questions that are being asked of Moldova. In particular, the UN is concerned about the mistreatment of gypsies and discrimination against Russian-speakers.

One of the questions related to whether Moldova intends to extend the application of the principle of equality and non-discrimination to non-citizens. This comes after a decision by Moldova's president Vladimir Voronin that no one can hold government office if they are citizens of another state.

Transdniestria sees this as discrimination. Almost all inhabitants in Transdniestria hold the PMR citizenship, being legal citizens of the unrecognized Pridnestrovskaia Moldavskaia Respublica. In addition, many also have Russian or Ukrainian citizenships. By Moldovan law, they are barred from participating in political life.

Even if they have Moldovan citizenship in addition, they must first renounce all other citizenships. This requirement is in violation of international human rights protocols. Under the human rights charters of the European Union and the United Nations, no human being must ever be forced to give up the citizenship under any circumstances.

Moldova is also being asked about information according to which high legal fees and the lack of interpretation services for members of linguistic minorities or foreign nationals prevent them from exercising their right to equal access to the courts.

A law which was been designed to exclude Transdniestrians from participation in Moldova's political life is also coming under UN scrutiny. Putting a brake on democracy for regional parties, Moldova's Law on Political Parties and Socio-Political Organizations contains a discriminatory requirement that, in order for a party to be registered, it must have 5,000 active members residing in at least half of the 32 administrative districts (with no less than 150 members in each of these districts). This effectively prevents the registration of regional parties or parties consisting of national minorities and automatically excludes Transdniestria's existing ten political parties from ever participating in any elections in Moldova.

Role of schools in preserving linguistic and cultural identities

Schools represent another one of the concerns of the UN's Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. It wants to know what measures are being taken to ensure adequate opportunities for Gagauz, Roma, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and other minority children to receive instruction in, or of, their native language and culture. What is being done to ensure the quality of teaching in Moldovan in schools in which Russian or another minority language is the main language used? Moldova has closed a number of Russian-language schools in recent years and prevented funding from reaching its Slavic minority.

Conversely, the situation of Romanian language schools in Transdniestria has been getting better. They are allowed to use Latin script. However, most Moldovan-speakers in Transdniestria are unfamiliar with Latin script, and prefer to send their children to schools where Cyrillic is used. The use of Latin script for Moldovan is a relatively new invention, having only been introduced upon Moldova's independence in 1991. Before that date, the Moldovan language was taught using Cyrillic.

In order to ensure that native Moldovan speakers in Transdniestria can preserve their linguistic and cultural identities, the public school system in Transdniestria teaches Moldovan using the original Cyrillic alphabet. Several schools also exist for those who prefer Moldovan in newer Latin script, thus enabling parents of children a freedom of choice which only exists in Transdniestria but not in Moldova. In Moldova, all Moldovans schools use Latin script exclusively. Native Moldovan speakers who desire to preserve their linguistic and cultural identities are forced to send their children to school in Transdniestria.

Violence against Moldova's Roma also worried the UN. Almost nothing has been done to investigate and punish those responsible for the armed police raid on the Roma community in Yedintsy on 18 July 2005 during which 30 Romani, including children, were arrested and beaten. Now, the United Nations is asking what measures have been taken to compensate those Roma who were reportedly detained incommunicado for several weeks and released without a charge.

War preceded by perceived discrimination of minorities

In the case of Moldova, a war was fought with Transdniestria in 1992 on the basis of Romanian-oriented nationalist exclusion of Slavic minorities. In the run-up to the war, Moldova's parliament had passed an exclusionary language law which was targeted against Russians: The purpose of the law was to forbid non-Romanian speakers from holding jobs. These are the sort of events that the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is trying to put a stop to, according to a definition by Irish law professor Joshua Castellino.

Castellino explains that the CERD review is based on a belief that "discrimination based on race, color, descent, ethnic or national origin, is often the precursor to the outbreak of violence" and that this is what the United Nations seeks to prevent in these cases.

In 1992 Russia entered the war to separate the two sides. Moldova was forced to sign a cease-fire which is today observed by a small contingent of peacekeepers from four different countries along with supervision by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE. The cease-fire has held ever since and peacekeepers have ensured no further loss of lives.

In the legal limbo created by a war which was never formally ended - but only suspended - Transdniestria has been living under its own sovereignty for most of the part two decades.

Today, a combination of political party building and necessity has allowed Transdniestria to become a safe and moderately successful quasi-state. Although it functions as an independent country in all practical effects, it has no international recognition and no access to formal representation within the international human rights community. There is now a renewed hope in Tiraspol that the UN's most recent interest in the region will provide an improvement in human rights on both banks of the Dnister, and an equal treatment of the two sides with equal access for both Transdniestria as well as Moldova to international human rights organizations.

See also:
» Amnesty International warns of Moldova human rights abuses
» Moldova falling apart as corruption, poverty force half the country to leave

On the web:
» UN OHCHR / CERD: Human rights questions for Republic of Moldova