Moldova Urged to Help Veterans in Transnistria

Moldova must raise the issue of intimidation faced by Moldovan army veterans living in breakaway Transnistria during negotiations with the rebel region, a Chisinau-based think-tank says.

Igor Munteanu, executive director of the Institute for Development and Social Initiatives 'Viitorul, said Moldova's Bureau for Reintegration should do more to address the problems facing those who fought for Moldova during a 1992 war over Transnistria and who still live there.

Such veterans say they still face threats and intimidation from the rebel region's intelligence service, known as the KGB.

"The problems with some localities on the left bank of the Dniester River [...] should be solved by the [Moldovan] Reintegration Bureau in the negotiations with Tiraspol," said Munteanu, referring to the capital of breakaway Transnistria. 

"They still knock on our door and harass us from time to time," Alexei Mocreac, a teacher from the Transnistrian town of Grigoriopol and a former volunteer fighter for Moldova, told a roundtable on Wednesday organised to mark publication of a report by IDIS Viitorul on the situation facing war veterans in the Dubasari district, an area split between Transnistrian and Moldovan control since a brief war in 1992 that killed roughly 1,000 people.

Mocreac said he was once taken from his home to what he called 'the basement', an interrogation cell.

Rosian Vasiloi, author of the report and a retired colonel in the Moldovan border police, told BIRN: "As a rule, when they claim their rights, they are invited by the 'security organs' of the Transnistrian region and threatened with the opening of criminal files for participation in the war."

Vasiloi said the veterans had been neglected by Moldovan authorities involved in...