Union Council asks for damages for deportees

The Union Council suggests amending the legislation so that the deportees who were later rehabilitated could get damages for the moral harm done to them. The sums are to be set for every case separately, according to the civil legislation, jurist and public human rights activist Iulia Deleu said in a news conference on Tuesday. Deleu said that 90% of the deportees are pensioners. In order to improve their lives, the law on the rehabilitation of victims of political repression should be amended. “Such a practice is used in European countries, including Romania. The Moldovan courts groundlessly reject the applications for damages, arguing that the Civil Code can be applied only through the law on the rehabilitation of victims of political repression. But this law does not stipulate the timeframe for providing damages,” said the jurist. Iulia Deleu also said that these arguments are unfounded as damages are awarded not only based on the Civil Code, but also on other legal acts with the status of general law, including the Constitution of Moldova and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. “The problems of the victims of political repression are solved through court over periods of many years. The Union Council proposes a bill with amendments to the mentioned law, which will essentially contribute to solving the problems within limited timeframes, by simplifying the procedures and reducing the costs related to the recovery of the confiscated property. It is enough to apply Articles 20 and 53 of the Constitution of Moldova in this respect,” Iulia Deleu stated for Info-Prim Neo. Co-chairman of the Union Council Gheorghe Mirzenko, who studies the KGB files on deportees, said the deportations represented acts of genocide against the Bessarabian Romanians. “The criminals should answer for the crimes against humanity even after 100 years. There are persons in our state who do not condemn that genocide, but defend it or blame Stalin for it. The entire Soviet state was criminal. Therefore the state should answer, including the persons who managed the mass deportations,” he said. Attending the event, Teodosia Cosmin, who was deported in 1949 and is now a guide-administrator at the Museum “Memory of the Nation”, said that she still feels like a deportee. “We were real slaves. In 1992, we were given the same status as the so-called liberators, who still have privileges and benefit from concessions. When the Communists came to power in 2001, the concessions for the Bessarabian deportees were annulled. Those 4.5 lei that was added to our pension was taken away. This happens because we do not protest,” she stated. About 100,000 persons were deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan in 1941 and 1949. Over 90% of those deported did not return home.