Media NGOs Ask the Minister of Internal Affairs to Remove the Unlawful Seizure from the Newspaper ‘Cuvantul’

Non-government media organisations report an unusual case that took place on Thursday, 10 May 2018, in Rezina town. At the indication of the Economic Police Department of Rezina Police Inspectorate, an amount of copies of the independent weekly regional newspaper ‘Cuvantul’, which were transported from the printing house to Rezina post office, were sized.

We qualify this incident as a serious abuse of the police and an attempt to intimidate the journalists of this weekly independent newspaper who earlier published various investigations about the personal assets and interests of the district leaders, particularly of Mrs Eleonora Graur, President of Rezina district and Vice-President of the Democratic Party. The seizure of the copies of certain publications is a practice of totalitarian regimes, and represent an anti-democratic abuse and a serious attack against the freedom of expression. The reason invoked by the police from Rezina is the lack of the trip ticket of the driver carrying the copies of the newspaper ‘Cuvantul’ with a private car outside Rezina town, which is illegal and represents a violation of the transport rules in force.

We ask the Minister of Internal Affairs, Alexandru Jizdan, to initiate an internal investigation and to remove immediately the seizure so that the copies of the newspaper ‘Cuvantul’ reach the readers, and avoid depriving them of the right to information. We demand to sanction those who ordered the seizure and to exclude such anti-democratic practices from the activity of the police. We urge the Prime Minister – Pavel Filip and the Speaker of the Parliament – Andrian Candu, to take action to elucidate the true causes of this incident and the possible political implications.

We bring this scandalous case to the attention of the Delegation of the European Union, US Embassy in the Republic of Moldova and other development partners, and we call for their intervention in order to ensure the editorial freedom of independent publications in the Republic of Moldova.