Emma Nicholson: These are the voices of despair, deprived of the right to vote
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Independent Minds
What is happening in Moldova is an outpouring of young people's misery. I have just spent four days as an election observer there and from this experience, as well as from many previous visits, I know that young Moldovans simply despair at their curtailed futures.
It is significant that when protesters stormed the presidential buildings on Tuesday they were shouting: "We are Romanian, we are Europeans." That is because they have no jobs, no futures and they don't want their country to revert to Russian influence.
They feel that successive Communist governments have not fulfilled the promises they made. And they are right.
They also blame the international observers, with some justification, for declaring the weekend elections fair. As one of those 280 observers, I went to the Transdniestrian border and found a tragic situation with grown men and women crying and weeping. They had tried to come into Moldova by bus to vote, which was their right. But they were prevented from getting on their bus. Some who persisted and tried to get through by different routes were video-taped, their papers taken from them and they were warned that they might lose their jobs.
One parliamentary candidate told me she must have lost 1,000 votes from this one incident. Some of the other things I saw at the count worried me. Of course I have no evidence of fraud but the concerns I expressed did not get into the OSCE findings and conclusions. The reason is that the OSCE also has Russia as a member.
This is tragic for Moldovans who live in an exceedingly poor European state. Nearly 80 per cent of the population lives at or below subsistence level. They survive on a couple of hundred euros a month.
Moldova is one of our neighbours, on the European Union's eastern border, and the key to its future lies in the EU taking responsibility. For our own security as well as for the good of the Moldovan people we should be helping them to get decent livelihoods. Our objective is democracy and the rule of law as a proven path to prosperity and security, but we in the EU should also be helping companies to invest in the region. We should sign Moldova into a very strong association agreement with the EU and move slowly towards integrating the country into the union.
The only alternative is for them to sink back on the dependency of Russia and that would be a deeply unhappy prospect.
Baroness Nicholson MEP was a member of the delegation from the European Parliament to the International Election Observation Mission to the Republic of Moldova
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Comments
In one country the USA (bad, evil, oil stealers being the empty headed racist refrain) is in control and has delivered emancipation
In another Russia is in control and freedom is lost because Europe is the defender of freedom.
Lets face it, someone may have been able to emancipate Iraq better than the USA but no one did, or would.
Europeans in contrast will sell out anyones freedom to protect their gas and oil supply and would never fight and die for anyones freedom, probably not even their own. Whats more, should anyone else try and act to defend freedom Europeans will oppose it and spread shallow lies about stealing oil, imperialism, indeed any of their own multiple crimes that they continue to commit, and the USA doesnt.
For me I prefer a perhaps clumsy but well intentioned power than a sefish avaricious and uncaring bunch of (partly) retrired colonialists. Clumsiness can be worked on, black selfish hearts cannot be improved, it is the "nature" of the people. Black selfish hearts are only good for culling. Go on Putin, no one gives a sh*t about these "people", help yourself
Forrest Gump beats Cruella Da Ville every time.
However, in Moldova there is no direct interest for the Western powers, as we consider it (still) a Russian sphere of influence. Let the Moldavians decide to shut down the Communist aparatchiks on their own and then maybe the West can lend a helping hand (I hope). But let's not go against the grain of the local powers to create democracy, because it won't happen, just like it didn't happen in Iraq.
This person even says in the article I HAVE NO EVIDENCE, well go and get some before denouncing an elected government- especially when you represent what has become a severely anti-democratic institution. The EU and its parliament have denounced as UNDEMOCRATIC the popular votes against Lisbon/the Constitution. Every country which voted on them DEMOCRATICALLY voted against them- in spite of heavy media bias and the support of the dominant political parties. How dare you denounce another country's democracy- In Ireland Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, labour, the greens and the PDs (total circa 90% of voters) and in France the Socialist, consevatives and president (total circa 80% of voters) backed them and LOST. They lost in holland, would have lost in the UK (where a party can gain a comfortable majority in parliament with 35%, and an overwheliming majority with only 40-45 %, of votes cast- democracy?). End the hypocrisy now! Let us put our own house in order before denouncing others!
Yes, sure those are Russians to blame for everything including for the riots organized in Moldova
by EU member Romania.
Russia on the other hand, needs more sympathy and western suck-ups. After all, they control most of Europe's natural gas, and have lots of nuclear weapons too! The fact that their predecessor state the soviet union, together with nazi Germany, started the 2nd world war by cynically dividing up most of eastern Europe between themselves, leading to decades of genocide and unspeakable human misery from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea (even in Poland of all places, on whose behalf Britain originally went to war with Germany in 1939) ... well, that's something which is more convenient to forget. Let's all just dwell on the favorable aspects of "Uncle Joe" Stalin instead, shall we?
Also for all this screaming about the Russians being the USSR- Lenin partly Jewish Zinoviev-Jewish (not a criticism), Stalin and Beria- Georgian, Kruschev-Ukrainian. Russia suffered as much as any other Soviet nation (the Russian Empire is a different matter). The USSR built itself on communist ideology (not practice). They had supporters and opponents in every single Soviet Republic. If you want o see real genocidal maniacs check out the British, French and Spanish empires and (the story of native americans is one of history's greatest hidden genocides). In Ireland we know all about the "civilised" British Empire.
Yes you are right, I do have a bias in favour of the USSR and Russia. However a large part of that is a distaste for hypocrisy. Russia and the USSR are no more guilty of crimes against humanity than the British (Ireland, India, Africa, Australia) the French (Algeria, Indochina, Madagascar and West Africa) and the USA (latin America, Native Americans, Vietnam and countless anti-democratic and anti-socialist movements in black Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan), and lets not forget those wonderful Belgians. However the Russians committed most of their crimes at home and against themselves and other white peoples. I wonder do we in the west base our moral superiority on the fact that we mostly exported our violence and killed or sponsored the killing of people with darker skin than us
http://www.unimedia.md
You will find there pictures and videos about what really happened in Moldova. About a real and peaceful protest transformed into a violent act by Voronin's people. See how students and pupils who protested peacefully on tuesday have been arrested today FROM THEIR UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLS by policemen who came with videos in their schools and identified them!!!! There are 200 young people at this moment, including minors, arrested, taken out of the capital, Chisinau, without anyone knowing where they were taken.
There are witnesses saying that when the Parliament took fire, the protesters were outside and still the fire burst from the inside!
Don't take communist's side! You have no idea what it's like!
There are three romanian journalists, the last that were left on moldavian soil, that are sought by the police at their hotel to be sent to Romania. Other were denied acces in Moldova in tuesday and wednesday, romanian and foreign journalists! So shut up and try to understand!
Furthermore, although relations between Chisinau and Moscow are reasonably good at present, this has not always been the case under this 'communist' government so bear this in mind when considering the extent of Russian influence over this election.
The Moldovan people are not ethnic Romanians fighting a long struggle for re-unification. Before Romania's EU ascension, the Moldovan people were proud to be independent. Nobody was calling for re-unification before then even under the previous pro-Romanian government and the same government that was defeated by the communist party partly for nostalgic reasons because the people realised they were better off under the communist rule of the Soviet Union.
The Moldovan protesters who consider themselves to be oppressed should spare a thought for the ethnic Russian minority who have been advised not to speak their lingua franca in public for fear of reprisals and be appreciative of President Voronin's management of the delicate multicultural balance that exists there rather than upset it with these disorganised and frivolous efforts to bludgeon their way into the EU.
As you say, Russian is widely spoken and many natives do know it better than they know Romanian - including the natives who would have been educated after 1990. Ironically, coverage of last weeks riots shows protesters actually shouting revolutionary slogans in Russian.
Moldova has a long way to progress but the progress that has been made in the years under Voronin's communist government shouldn't be dismissed. If the Romania unification issue is a red herring as you say, then I think the protesters ought to manage their expectations. Before the communist party took power, there weren't even working street lights in Chisinau.