CHDOM demands that Russia pay compensations to Moldovans deported 60 years ago

The Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Moldova (CHDOM) says that the Russian Federation should pay a part of the compensations for the Moldovans deported in the Soviet period. According to the CHDOM, these persons are now neglected and discriminated against other social groups, Info-Prim Neo reports. At a news conference on Friday, Andrei Briceac, jurist at the CHDOM, presented a bill that offers the deportees more rights. It provides for the modification of the preamble to the law on the rehabilitation of the political victims. Thus, the deportees could benefit from compensations and assistance from the state, Briceac said. The bill will be submitted to the future legislature and to the interested election runners that could use it in the election campaign, said the CHDOM president Stefan Uratu, who takes the 22nd position on the list of the Liberal Party. He condemned the policy on deportees pursued by the current government, stressing that they speak more about dogs today than about these persons. According to Teodor Carnat, executive director of the CHDOM, the deportees have been recognized as political victims, but are not guaranteed equal rights. The property confiscated from them in the Soviet period is not returned to them and they are not paid damages for their sufferings, he said. Teodor Carnat also said that though the first court decides that the deportees should be paid damages, the Supreme Court of Justice quashes the decision. “This is done in order not to set a precedent,” he added. Moreover, the jurist says that the state should apologize to the now elderly persons that were forced to leave their homes together with their parents 60 years ago. “Money is needed to pay compensations, but only political will is needed to apologize,” said Mihail Cebotari, who is also a jurist at the Helsinki Committee. He considers that the state deprived these persons of a normal life and therefore should now offer them the same rights as those enjoyed by the veterans at least. The CHDOM says that owing to the shortcomings in the legislation, Moldova will be found guilty by the European Court of Human Rights in new cases. On July 6, it is 60 years of the Stalinist deportations of 1949, when over 40,000 persons were forced to leave their homes and lost all their property.