Moldova

CPJ Update December 15, 2004 News from the Committee to Protect Journalists

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New York, September 8, 2004—A cameraman with the Chisinau-based state television station Moldova One was arrested and sentenced to 15 days in prison this week after trying to cover the seizure of a Moldovan railway station in the breakaway enclave of Trans-Dniester.

The cameraman, Dinu Mija, and Moldova One correspondent Lyudmila Munteanu were on assignment in Tighina (also known as Bender) on September 6, covering the railway center seizure by Transdniestrian authorities, local reports said. (Molodova One was formerly Teleradio Moldova.)

New York, June 25, 2005—Alina Anghel, 29, an investigative journalist with the opposition weekly tabloid Timpul, based in Moldova's capital, Chisinau, was attacked outside her home on the morning of Wednesday, June 23, as she was leaving for work, according to local and international news reports.

New York, April 26, 2004—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is pleased by the Moldovan Parliament’s decision to remove Article 170 from the country’s Criminal Code. Article 170 called for up to five years imprisonment for defamation.

Moldova’s authoritarian president, Vladimir Voronin, sponsored the initiative in March after European officials called on countries within the former Soviet bloc to decriminalize libel. The proposal was greeted with unanimity in an April 22 session of Parliament.

Moldova has emerged from the Soviet era with many of the problems that plague other states in the region: an ongoing separatist conflict dividing the nation's ethnic populations, widespread government corruption, financial hardship, and a biased judiciary. Unlike many other former Soviet republics, however, Moldova has neither the natural resources nor the geopolitical importance to make it attractive to foreign investors. Under these harsh conditions, it has been difficult for a free press to develop and flourish.