Transnistria Forcing Young Into Army, Moldovan Report Says

Authorities in Moldova's breakaway Transnistria region continue to force youngsters to enlist in its growing military force, where some of them suffer human rights violations or even get killed, a report released by a human rights organization based in Moldova says.

Experts from Promo-Lex, which is based in Chisinau, say that although the administration in Tiraspol prevents human rights groups from investigating incidents, numerous desertions and suspicious deaths have occurred.

Both the Moldovan and international authorities have taken "a passive attitude towards the violations", it complains.

"The aggressive promotion of mandatory military service by the administration in the Transnistrian region signals an increased interest in the militarization of the region," the report reads.

"Enrolling in these structures is tacitly accepted and unanimously tolerated, when it should be deemed as illegal detention," the report stresses.  

Transnistria, a strip of territory on Moldova's eastern border with the Ukraine, declared its independence in 1990, when the former Soviet republic of Moldova broke away from the USSR.

Its de-facto independence has since been upheld by Russian "peacekeepers" of the 14th Army who still keep 2,000 soldiers in Transnistria. Today, it has a mainly ethnic Russian and Ukrainian population.

Although internationally Transnistria remains part of Moldova, its authorities have exercised no real power there for the past 25 years, since conflict between the pro-Russian separatists and the Moldovan army left at least 800 dead, ending in a ceasefire in 1992.

The problem has defied international efforts to settle it, largely because its continued existence as an unrecognised statelet suits the Kremlin's...