Moldova Accuses Transnistria of Blocking Access to Education

Moldova's vice-premier for reintegration Cristina Lesnic criticised the regime in the country's breakaway region of Transnistria on Wednesday for not allowing some pupils to attend Romanian-language schools unless they are on a separatist-approved access list.

Lesnic said there should be free access to Romanian-language schools on the basis of a student card for every pupil in the breakaway region.

She said she had addressed the Transnistrian authorities with her request in writing.

"We came up with a constructive proposition: that the 1,500 pupils, parents and teachers be allowed access on the basis of a study card and no longer require proxies, prior notifications, etc," Lesnic said.

She added that Chisinau wants "to get children out of the political dispute" between Moldova and the breakaway region.

Free access to education in the Romanian language was one of the conditions in the recent 'Berlin Plus' package negotiated in 2017 and 2018 by Chisinau and Tiraspol under the OSCE's patronage.

Over the past six years, the number of pupils studying at Romanian-language schools in the breakaway region has diminished by 35 per cent as a result of Transnistria's policies.

Since the beginning of the Dnister War in 1992 between Chisinau and Tiraspol, the secessionist Transnistrian regime, under Russian influence, has conducted a campaign to shut down all the schools which were teaching the Romanian language with the Latin alphabet and impose the Russian language and Cyrillic script.

Only a few schools and high schools have continued teaching in Romanian.

Lesnic's statement came a day after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia violated pupils' right to education in Romanian-language schools in...