The incident started when a police car arrived at a known "crusing area" in the Moldovan capital Chişinau where only last May, the Liberal Mayor banned Moldova PRIDE, while allowing an anti-Gay demonstration to proceed. The police asked two men to go with them to the police car, where the two police officers proceeded to verbally abuse and intimidate the two men with homophobic and clearly derogatory remarks.
The incident was witnessed by a male staff member from the Moldovan LGBT organisation "Gender Doc-M" who witnessed this incident while he was doing outreach and HIV prevention work. He attempted to intervene on their behalf. As the situation was only deteriorating, the outreach worker contacted the President of Gender-Doc-M whose intervention result in their release but not before the police had taken their personal details including their work addresses. Only one of the police officers, Sergiu GAINA, presented his identity, his anonymous colleague was armed.
In their press release Gender Doc-M would like to make clear that while the precise circumstances of this suicide may never become clear, and it seems clear from the Moldovan police that they will not investigate, that this incident as witnessed by one of their outreach workers is consistent with the pattern of police abuse of power towards the LGBT community.
This pattern involves police men knowing the places where LGBT people meet and using their official position to pressure people coming to the cruising areas. This often involves blackmailing or threatening them and detaining them at police stations. High ranking police officials seem to accept or ignore these human rights violations
Gender Doc-M Center have appealed to the Ministry of Interior and General Police Department to investigate such cases and to put an end to the abuse of power but there has never been any reply from the officials.
A letter template outlining the basic facts for sending to Moldovan Embassies will be posted shortly on the PRIDE Solidarity website.
We thank for this article to our friend Clare Dimyon
It's a shame that these things happen in the 21st century.
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