Protests against the April 2009 Moldovan parliamentary election results began on 6 April 2009 in major cities of Moldova (including Bălți and the capital, Chișinău) before the final official results were announced. The demonstrators claimed that the election, which saw the governing Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) win a majority of seats, were fraudulent, and alternatively demanded a recount, a new election, or resignation of the government. Similar demonstrations took place in other major Moldovan cities, including the country's second largest, Bălți, where over 1,000 people protested.
The protests and wave of violence is sometimes described as the "grape revolution" but the term was not used much by outsiders; in Moldova, it is sometimes referred as the Chisinău Uprising (Romanian: Revolta de la Chișinău). Some of the protesters discussed and organized themselves using Twitter, hence its moniker used by the media, the Twitter Revolution. In Chișinău, where the number of protesters rose above 30,000, the demonstration escalated into a riot on 7 April. Rioters attacked the parliament building and presidential office, breaking windows, setting furniture on fire and stealing property.
Background
The unrest began as a public protest after the announcement of preliminary election results on 6 April 2009, which showed the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova victorious, winning approximately 50% of the votes. Final results, published on 8 April, showed that the PCRM garnered 49.48% of the vote, gaining 60 parliament seats – one less than the three-fifths required for the party to control the presidential election. The opposition rejected the election results, accusing the authorities of falsification in the course of counting the votes and demanded new elections.
The PCRM had been in power since 2001. A series of protests had been organized by opposition parties in 2003, when the government attempted to replace the school subject "History of the Romanians" with "History of Moldova". Students protested for months before the government backed down on its plans.
Petru Negură, a university professor of sociology at the Moldova State University and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, France, attributed the origins of the crisis to the ethnic identity problem: some people in Moldova identify themselves as "Moldovans", while others as "Romanians".
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) International Election Observing Mission declared the elections generally free and fair, although it also reported that the comparison of data on the voting age population provided by the Moldovan Ministry of the Interior with the number of registered voters provided by local executive authorities revealed a discrepancy of some 160,000. A member of the OSCE observation team, Emma Nicholson disagreed with the assessment of the OSCE report on the fairness of the elections.
A number of voters have also reported cases of fraud where deceased and nonattendant persons were registered as having voted.
According to Vladimir Socor, a political analyst for the Jamestown Foundation, the elections were evaluated as positive on the whole, with some reservations not affecting the outcome or the overall initial assessment. Exit polls had shown a comfortable win for the Communist Party, with the only uncertainty being the size of the winning margin.
Opposition parties pointed out that the lists of eligible voters included 300,000 more people compared to the previous elections, although the population of Moldova has been shrinking. Due to this, they claimed that around 400,000 fictive voters had been created in the previous two months and that this changed the voting result. It was also claimed that the authorities had printed more than one voting bulletin for certain persons.
Demonstration and riot
The first demonstrations, organized as a flashmob by a 25-year-old Moldovan journalist Natalia Morar, began in Chișinău on 6 April 2009, with a larger number of demonstrators arriving on the next day, 7 April. The demonstration, numbering over ten thousand, most of them students and young people, gathered in the city center on Ștefan cel Mare boulevard. The protest against the announced election results turned into clashes with the police, who used tear gas and water cannons. However, the police were soon overwhelmed by the number of the protesters. Rioters broke into the nearby parliament building and the office of president. Entering the building through broken windows, demonstrators set parts of the building on fire, using documents and furniture both inside and outside. The building was retaken by the police later in the evening.
The protesters, some of which carried Romanian flags, chanted pro-Western, pro-Romanian and anti-government slogans such as "We want Europe", "We are Romanians" and "Down with Communism".
Two teenagers, Ion Galațchi and Dragoș Mustețea, with the alleged approval of the policemen, replaced the Flags of Moldova at the Presidential and Parliament buildings with a Flag of Romania and a Flag of Europe, claiming that they expected that this would calm the crowd.
The emergency hospital of Chișinău reported treating over 78 injured police officers and protesters on 8 April, while the Moldovan president stated that 270 people were injured in the riots. Moldovan opposition called on the authorities to carry out new elections and on the demonstrators to cease violence. Moldovan national television had initially reported that a young woman died of carbon monoxide poisoning due to the fires within the parliament building set off by the rioters. However, it was later reported that the woman was saved by a team of medics.
On the evening of 7 April, a group of protesters organised a National Salvation Committee, consisting of student and civic representatives. Writer Nicolae Dabija, a vice-president of the committee said that the intended purpose of the committee is to organise new elections.
On 7 April, Serafim Urechean, leader of the opposition Party Alliance Our Moldova, during a meeting with President Voronin said that the riots were orchestrated by security services. However, former Moldovan President Petru Lucinski believes the violence was the spontaneous result of the actions of leaderless youths frustrated with the waning of Moldovan democracy. He said that there is no need to look further to explain the unrest and the movement "didn't have any leaders, one part went in one direction, a peaceful one and another part took a violent turn."
Protests of solidarity with demonstrators in Chișinău took place in Cimișlia, Bălți, Ungheni and other Moldovan cities.
The protests continued on Sunday, 12 April, when around 3,000 protesters gathered in the central square where the mayor of Chișinău, Dorin Chirtoacă, held a speech about how Moldova's youth reject Communism because they "understand that their future has been stolen". However, the students were notably absent from the crowd, having been sanctioned for their participation in the previous protests.
Arrests and accusations of torture
On the night following 7 April, around 1 am, police forces routed the remaining crowds in the main square and arrested about 200 participants. On the following day, more arrests were issued, with demonstrators beaten and transported away in police cars. Similarly, footage showed demonstrators getting dragged away and beaten by what appears to be plain-clothes police officers. Among the protesters to be hospitalized after being beaten was Andrei Ivanțoc, formerly a political prisoner in Transnistria. An independent MP, Valentina Cușnir, was near the main street of Chișinău at about midnight on 7 April. She reported that she was abused by a police officer.
Amnesty International accused the Moldovan government of violating human rights through the actions of the police, that it detained indiscriminately hundreds of protesters, including minors, who were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment. The organization issued a memorandum to the Moldovan government about this case.
On 9 April, the Moldovan Prosecutor General's Office asked Ukraine to extradite Gabriel Stati, a Moldovan businessman whom the Moldovan government accused of being involved in the organization and financing of the civil unrest. Stati was in Ukrainian custody along with another suspect, Aurel Marinescu, for their alleged "involvement in organizing an attempt to overthrow the Moldovan government." On 16 April, the General Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine approved the extradition of Stati and Marinescu.
Romanian journalists from Antena 3, TVR, and newspaper Gândul accused the Moldovan authorities of trying to intimidate them. On 10 April, Moldovan authorities arrested journalist Rodica Mahu (Editor-in-Chief of Jurnal de Chișinău) and Romanian journalist Doru Dendiu, the permanent correspondent of TVR in Moldova, for their alleged involvement in organizing the riots. However, Mahu and Dendiu were released from police questioning later that day, Dediu being told that he must leave Moldova. Another journalist, Natalia Morar, was put under house arrest. Also, the internet access in Chisinau was blocked in reason to limit citizens' access to news sites.
On 11 April, the Moldovan Ministry of Internal Affairs announced it arrested 295 people in Chișinău for their involvement in the protests.
On 13 April, Chișinău mayor Dorin Chirtoacă made an appeal to international organizations regarding the arrests in Moldova, claiming that the protesters had been tortured, not given the right to talk to a lawyer and that NGOs were not allowed access to the detention centres. He also claimed that the real number of arrestees was higher than the official figures, as the list compiled by the press of missing protesters reached 800 names.
A United Nations report, based on a visit to one detention center, said that the hundreds of people arrested following the civil unrest were subject to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, being beaten with clubs, water bottles, fists and feet, were denied food and access to legal counsel, and brought before judges in batches of six and collectively charged. The UN representatives were denied access to other detention centers, despite legislation which allows them to conduct such visits. Edwin Berry, the UN human rights adviser for Moldova, said that during the visit to the detention center almost everyone he talked to had visible marks that show that they had been beaten.
On 15 April, President Voronin called for a general amnesty and "an end to all forms of prosecution against participants in street protests", however, Chirtoacă announced that no protesters had been freed by 17 April.
Marian Lupu, the speaker of Moldova's parliament, admitted that the arrested protesters were subjected brutality from the police and he announced that the police officers involved would not be punished, being covered by the amnesty announced by President Voronin.
Deaths
Following his arrest, a 23-year-old protester, Valeriu Boboc, died in a Chișinău hospital on 8 April 2009. The official cause was smoke poisoning from the riot, but his family insisted that he was beaten to death by the police, his body being full of contusions. An investigation was opened into the case and a policeman was arrested on charges of Boboc's murder. As of November 2010, the case is still ongoing.
The body of another protester, Ion Țâbuleac, with multiple wounds and fractures, was allegedly dumped from a car belonging to the Moldovan Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The body of a third protester, Eugen Țapu, was handed to the relatives by the police on 16 April. The official cause of death was given as suicide by hanging, however, the relatives disputed this because they claim that he had no marks on the neck to suggest this. According to Victor Său, the mayor of Țapu's home village Soroca, there is a link between Eugen Țapu's death and the protest from 7 April because the police refuse to provide further explanations and the dates of his death and the protest's day are the same. Său stated that police refused to provide any explanations on the reasons behind the death of Eugen Tapu, and that according to the papers he died on 7 April, the day when police begin the mass arrests of young protesters. The police say they found the decomposing body of Eugen Țapu on 15 April, hanging from his bootlaces in the attic of a building in the capital. "They killed him, that's for sure, and they must answer for what they've done" said Eugen's father.
Maxim Canișev (born 1989, Hristoforovca) died on 8 April, but was found with his spinal column broken in Ghidighici Lake only on 18 April.
The Moldovan government strongly denied any involvement in the deaths. The executive director of Amnesty International Moldova, Evghenii Golosceapov, does not believe the minister's denials.