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Expert: measures for combating extremism, adopted on the left bank of the Nistru, are characteristic to authoritarian regimes

08 August 2014
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The Tiraspol administration is following the ways of authoritarian regimes. It was the comment of political analyst Oazu Nantoi to the decree for combating extremism issued by Transnistrian leader Yevgeny Shevchuk. The decree allows providers to restrict access to online sources of information.
 
The decree on combating extremism issued by the Tiraspol leader Yevgeny Shevchuk entered into force on 6 August. According to this document, local authorities will be able to block users’ access to any means of information, including Internet-based, if they find extremist content in them.
 
Political analyst Oazu Nantoi believes that Shevchuk is trying to increase his authority and the authority of his regime among citizens, which has weakened lately, and to impose himself to the region’s mass media, which are in a critical situation as it is.
 
“The regime on the left bank of the Nistru is authoritarian by definition: it admitted no pluralism of opinion since its establishment and up to this moment. On the left of the Nistru, like in Russia, there are de facto no political parties, and the majority of mass media are subordinated to the separatist regime,” Nantoi said.
 
According to the expert, the Tiraspol administration is in a deep crisis because an increasing number of Transnistrian residents are applying for Moldovan biometric passports, while the region’s businesses are intensifying their relations with the European Union. “The lack of any justification for the existence of this regime is increasingly evident,” Oazu Nantoi underlined.
 
The Transnistrian leader’s decree was also determined by another factor – Russian president Vladimir Putin’s failed plans to take control over Ukraine and then over the Transnistrian region, the expert thinks. “The regime on the left bank of the Nistru is in a state of advanced degradation, and it proceeded to the so-called ‘tightening the reigns’. Yevgeny Shevchuk wasn’t very liberal even before that. Let’s remember that some time ago several Internet forums that dared voicing negative opinions about him were closed,” Nantoi explained.
 
The analyst finds that the measures for combating extremism adopted by the administration of the self-proclaimed republic on the left bank of the Nistru are characteristic to authoritarian regimes. “After travelling around Europe with Nina Shtanski, Yevgeny Shevchuk went to Crimea, where he met Russian vice premier Dmitry Rogozin. It is obvious that now Shevchuk’s regime, following Moscow’s orders, is trying to not allow the loss of Russia’s positions in the region by choosing the traditional, repressive methods characteristic to all authoritarian regimes in the world,” Oazu Nantoi concluded.
 
Source of photo: http://gdb.rferl.org/