Most Active Members 2008 Awards :)

This happened at the end of 2008 year. After a year of serious changes, a lot of actions, it deserved to be celebrated.

So we met together, everyone that cared, that wanted to be a part of Amnesty International Moldova and had a wonderful time.

Jenea together with Viorel and Igor Grosu were giving the certificates of most active members of 2008. There were about ten I suppose. I knew I had to get one, but they were announcing more and more people, but not me. And one of the girls said I voted for you, so you got at least one vote, you must be there:)

But what a surprise was when Jenea left my certificate for the end. They gave the certificates to everyone and at the end Jenea said couple of words about me, about the blog and that I was very active and that is why I am being the most active member of AI Moldova for 2008!!! I was so proud:) I wasn't even expecting, that was really nice.

Here are some pictures of our small party.

25th December 2008 NGOs against Police illegalities

25th December 2008 NGOs against Police illegalities

As the Law on Assembly was adopted with the great help and assistance of the local NGO's of Moldova, now it is very hard to see how the authorities violate this law. It was confirmed that once this progressive law appeared the police started to violate the freedom of speech even more.

Once there was being organized any kind of protest, for example Hyde Park or any political party, the police was forcing the protesters, arresting them, provoking to violence. For example when people came out to protest against the intimidation of the teenage bloggers, this summer, the police didn't allow them to connect to electricity and were very unhappy with this protest. They arrested the computers of these bloggers and started a criminal investigation, but found nothing.

When the Liberal Party had a protest in Balti, there came several people and attacked the students that were protesting in peace. The police didn't even show up. They just ignored and claimed they didn't receive any requests, which is not true.

In the case of Hyde Park they were just arresting these people, policemen dressed as civilians, without presenting themselves, were just taking these people, stopping them, not allowing to perform the protest.

There is also the Matasaru story, when he wanted to come out and protest with some animals and before he even came out of the house, 20 police officers came to his house trying to stop him. And than again policemen dressed in civil violently took him and put in the car.

That is why several NGOs like Amnesty International Moldova, Hyde Park, Credo and others were protesting in front of the General Prosecution and Ministry of Internal Affairs on the 25th of December 2008.

Small Places Tour Amnesty International Moldova

Small Places Tour is a world wide campaign of Amnesty International which is organized each year. The main idea consists in organizing a concert of Live music somewhere in your native town, with some bands that would accept it and promote Amnesty International as a human rights defending organization.

There can participate all kind of music groups and express their solidarity regarding certain problems. Even unknown groups, that are not so popular yet can also participate.

This time Amnesty International Moldova decided to continue this tradition and invited a lot of groups from Moldova to participate and stand up for human rights.
So, during the two weeks from December, 2008 there were held concerts in several clubs of Chisinau.

The groups were singing their songs and also sharing information about Amnesty International, about death penalty, Guantanamo and so on. During this we were gathering signatures from the people. Our main petition was on Closing Guantanamo which was addressed to Barack Obama.

It was a lot of fun and we did a great work! We gathered hundreds of signatures and the concerts were great. Thanks to all the participants and AI Moldova members.

SAD NEWS((((

Girl, 13, stoned to death in Somalia as 1,000 watch; charged with adultery after rape

MOGADISHU, Somalia - A 13-year-old girl who said she had been raped was stoned to death in Somalia after being accused of adultery by Islamic militants, a human rights group said.

Dozens of men stoned Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow to death Oct. 27 in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators in the southern port city of Kismayo, Amnesty International and Somali media reported, citing witnesses. The Islamic militia in charge of Kismayo had accused her of adultery after she reported that three men had raped her, the rights group said.

source

Education in Human Rights Training, CNTM

I have spent an amazing time at this latest Human Rights training organized by CNTM. It took place on 13-19 October in Vadul lui Voda as usual. It was great, I really enjoyed it.

There were 30 participants that were representing different organizations. Each was working in a certain domain, but all together fighting for human rights protection.

The main idea was to create an educational training, with seminars, games and practical work, based on COMPASS manual. And I may say that the goal was easily reached.

At the beginning I thought that a week is too much for a training, but at the end it was not enough. We became friends with everyone, and had a lot of fun together. + I would like to mention the fact of non-formal education which is a great thing.

So we were having seminars and discussions with different guests, moldavian lawyers for example, like Ion Guzun and others. There was a meeting with representatives of several NGO's, Amnesty International Moldova, Roma Center, Minister of Justice and CNTM. There also came a representative from EU youth center.

We had a lot of games and simulations of real human rights violations. We had the opportunity to share our own experience about human rights violations that we had to face. Some people were telling really scary stories, but which happened to them, very emotional and difficult moments.

I hope everyone learned a lot of useful things from this training. I would like to thank the organizers of the training - Vera and Meg, Ruxandra, Lina Acalugaritei, Andrei Lutenco, Natalia Cojohari.

At the end we have received diplomas and other stuff, plus the COMPASS manual and we have also created the multiplicatori group.

18 -19 October - retreat

It was the middle of Human Rights Training when Jenea Golosceapov came to have discussion with the participants. After that he said that I was proposed to go to the "retreat" meeting with Amnesty members or Board and activists. I was really flattered, because I am a new member, but this means they really appreciate my work.

So we have been discussing different problems, what should be changed, what new to introduce. The atmosphere was really intense and difficult in some moments, but in the end we have reached an agreement.

Here are some pictures from that event. It took place in Straseni for 2 days 18-19 October.

12 October - Action against Death Penalty

On the 12th of October, Amnesty International Moldova had organized and action against Death Penalty. Even though Death Penalty is abolished in Moldova for many years, but people should know that there are countries were death penalty is being practiced.

The action was held in front of UNIC in the center of Chisinau. We have gathered almost 700 signatures. And this time I was the leader and picked up 112 signatures :)
I can't say that I was working very intensively, I was pretty relaxed, talking to people, telling them different arguments and convincing them to sign the petitions.

Here are some pictures from the action.

Amnesty International Moldova a desfăşurat acţiunea publică teatralizată dedicată Zilei mondiale împotriva pedepsei cu moartea. Evenimentul a avut loc pe 12 octombrie 2008, orele 12.00 – 15.00, în faţa magazinului UNIC (bd. Ştefan cel Mare şi Sfînt, 8).
Acţiunea a avut scopul de a atrage atenţia oamenilor asupra problemei şi de a-i face să se implice în susţinerea potenţialelor victime ale pedepsei cu moartea.

În cadrul acţiunii membrii şi activiştii AIM au colectat în jur de 700 semnături în susţinerea potenţialelor victime ale pedepsei cu moartea.

Same rights for everyone!

I just found out this news and I am shocked. That is why I want to share my thoughts about this...

The position of Amnesty International regarding different nationalities, religion and sex orientation is absolutely tolerant. And Amnesty International Moldova was supporting a lot the adoption of the Law on non-discrimination. But however the law was not adopted yet, due to the term "sexual orientation" which some people from Moldova would like to exclude, in order to continue their discrimination lawfully of people with a different sexual orientation.

So, very soon, on the 3-rd of October there is going to a be a protest against the law. I feel really sorry for those people, that they cannot understand that in the 20th century all the people are born equal and they cannot decide over the rights or liberties of other people, that are different from them.

More than that I read the post and I may say that the arguments that they bring are really ridiculous. Only a retarded person, that lives in the middle of nowhere can believe that. Adopting a law is not promoting homosexuals, it is protecting their rights, because they are discriminated every day.

No one will impose your children to go to homosexual promoting seminars. You are free to choose, the same as these people are free to choose what they want to do in this life.

The "funniest thing" is that people which are against the law, believe that there will be more homosexuals after adopting it. This is so stupid!!! They don't even know anything about this thing if they think so! How can there be more people?? you are born homosexual, you cannot become it...

As long as it doesn't affect you directly, they can do whatever they want. Everyone should remember the democratic principle that your freedom ends when the freedom of another person starts.

The Law should be adopted without excluding the term "sexual orientation" - if we want to live in a free, democratic society. I cannot feel myself ok if I know that someone is humiliated and has less rights than I do.
The modification will be humiliating of their human dignity and this will mean that the state doesn't protect all his citizens, which is its obligation.
:(

Summer Camp in Ukraine 23-25th of August

This time I was chosen for the Ukranian Amnesty International Summer Camp. We were selected here in Moldova by our coordinators. All you had to do is complete the request for the summer camp. So I did it, and Veaceslav Balan called me in two days and said that I was chosen.

The summer camp took place in Iliechevsk, which is 30 km from Odessa. I was really afraid to go by myself, because I had never been to Iliechevsk, and I went only once to Odessa.

But anyway there had to go two persons from Amnesty Moldova, so Nikita, another member went to Iliechevsk with me.

We came there on the morning of 23rd of August. It was the best hotel from the town, even though an old one.

There were over 40 people which came for the camp. Most of them were over 40 years old, which really surprised me a lot. The main topic that they discussed was the organizing stuff. About the duties of the Office and the duties of the National Committee. So it was different from our summer camp from Moldova.

Anyway it was fun, we've met a lot of new people. All of them were different, starting from professors, lawyers to simple students.

The whole event took place on the seaside. It was great.

MTV Death Penalty

Stop Violence Against Women 31 August 2008

The latest action that we had was about the SVAW campaign. All over the world people were collecting signatures against different cases about violation of women rights.

This time we have chosen two cases. The first one was about a woman in Iran, who is being kept in prison for 19 years and is sentenced to death penalty. She was raped when she was only 13, and the only eyewitness was killed. She was acused of murder of that boy, which is not logically to kill your only one eyewitness. But anyway she is 32 years old now, and nobody can tell what is going to be next.

The second case was about the refugees from South Osetia. This was a difficult decision actually, because this is a very hard political topic. Amnesty International members were discussing about this. But in the end agreed that if not taking someone's side, the refugees need help and deserve compassion from each person, because it's not their fault.

We have organized the action on the main boulevard, besides that it was the day of the Romanian Language - the national day and people were celebrating.

We've gathered over 400 signatures. We had special t-shirts specially for this action with SVAW logotype on them.
We were shot by most of the TV channels.
Check the video here...