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.