PRESS RELEASE

on violation of the right to freely express the vote

On June 17th, 2007, between 200 and 00 persons of criminal groups, organized and gifted with fire and easy weapons, with transport by the self-proclaimed regime from Tiraspol, tacitly encouraged by the forces of peace maintenance and by the Unified Control Commission, had undertaken new challenges for frustrating the local elections from Corjevo village, Dubasari district. Using tear-gas „ceriomuha” and threatening with fire weapons, these forces had rounded Corjevo village and intimidated the population and the voters. There was devastated the voting section placed inside the high-school “Mihai Eminescu”: they had destroyed the doors, the windows, the safe and voting ballots, lists of voters. There were defalcated material goods: alimentation products from the canteen of the high-school, radio and video machines, the portrait of the writer Mihai Eminescu and other goods, which are now documented and evaluated by a special commission. There were ill-treated the voters and the workers of police who were there to assure the rights of the voters, the public order and well development of the elections.

We blame the Unified Control Commission from the Russian Federation and from the self-proclaimed regime from Tiraspol for the repeatedly produced incident on 3^rd and 17^th of June 2007, once they had not made the necessary conclusions and did not condemn the actions of the criminal groups of self-proclaimed regime, and had admitted public statements which may be considered as an encouragement to criminal action against the civil population and constitutional bodies.

Being informed the Unified Control Commission (UCC), it did not thoroughly investigated the actions of the self-proclaimed regime, whereas on 3^rd of June 2007, there were victims between voters, electoral competitors and independent observers. Moreover, civil persons and militiamen of the self-proclaimed regime, armed, had freely circulated in security zone and even closely to the peace-keeping forces next to Corjevo village, applying violence towards the civil persons. Unfortunately, the representatives of the UCC from the Russian Federation and self-proclaimed regime, had proven non-seriousness in incident analysis and had supported the idea that in order to avoid the provoked clashes by the criminal regime there should be given up to performing the elections – which would mean to deprive the inhabitants of Corjevo village from the right to vote and denotes the inefficiency of actual mechanism of peace-keeping.

Decision of UCC from 17^th of June 2007 on evacuation of criminal organized system of Tiraspol regime and order forces of the Republic of Moldova represents a flagrant violation of Constitution of the Republic of Moldova and once again proves the inefficiency of UCC, partial involvement of the Russian Federation, underlining the necessity to be replaced as soon as possible the actual mechanism of peace-keeping in the region.

It is the right of the citizens from Corjevo village to decide the organization of elections and as long as the alleged “Transnistrian republic” is kept unrecognized, it does not have the right to impose any restrictions to the civil population, especially once these are directed to violate the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova, actions which should be qualified through Criminal Code of the Republic of Moldova.

Taking into consideration the up-mentioned, we are making the following recommendations:

1. To admit that the actual mechanism of peace maintaining with the UCC represents a screen in the back of whom the self- proclaimed regime from Tiraspol, the criminal structures intimidate the population, transforming the 4-5 hundred thousands of inhabitants from the left side of the Nistru in hostages of the regime installed through violence in this region;
2. Urgently to be reviewed the rules of UCC and of peace-keeping forces, by establishing at the same time certain responsibilities for conscious actions or non-actions that leaded to de-establish the situation and to violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. For this there should be established an independent body, which would appreciate the actions or non-actions of UCC;
3. It is necessary to review the scheme of position of the posts of peace-keeping forces, in order for these to not be favored the criminal organized structures by the Tiraspol regime to civil population disadvantage and constitutional bodies of the Republic of Moldova;
4. Once the actual mechanism of peace-keeping in the region neither rules to any solving of the conflict (but even deep-rooting it), nor to a better respect for human rights, there is necessary to replace the actual mechanism with the mechanism of the GUAM countries or of the countries of the European Union;
5. We are addressing to the authorities of the Republic of Moldova, to the president of the United States of America, to the president of the EU countries and to other international bodies to undertake maximum efforts in order to determine the Russian Federation to evacuate the troops and military ammunitions in the shortest time from the territory of the Republic of Moldova.

With respect,

Stefan Uritu,

President of Moldovan Helsinki Committee