THE JOURNALISTS UNION FROM MOLDOVA EXPLANATORY REPORT by Valeriu Saharneanu,

THE JOURNALISTS UNION FROM MOLDOVA
EXPLANATORY REPORT


The national liberation movement in the Republic of Moldova, a former Soviet republic, started in 1987. It was stimulated by the attempt of the Kremlin staff to reform the communist party and the Soviet socialism. “Perestroika and glasnost” however gave a stir to the huge mass of problems the Soviet society suffered from. The fear of reprisals inhibited, for decades, the people’s discontent with the genocide practiced by the Bolshevik government against the people locked by force into the Soviet Union. The little dose of freedom through which the Kremlin wanted to make up the hideous face “of the empire of evil” caused the implosion which later crushed it. From 1989 through, the most important objective of the Liberation Movement were achieved: the right to the Romanian language, to the Latin script, to independence and sovereignty. The want for freedom made hundreds of thousands of people get to streets to claim their right to self-determination, legally accomplished in 1991. It was in those processes that the Moldovan journalistic guild grew up.

In 1990, the Journalists Union from Moldova declared its independence from the Soviet structure ideologically subordinated to the communist party of the USSR. The journalists working in state-owned media adopted rule3s to transform them into public services. From 1991 to 1994, the first private media appeared, as the state broadcaster worked as a public national broadcasting entity. Scared by the Europeanization processes Moldova was passing through, and especially by the possibility to join the motherland, Romania, Russia started, in 1992, a five-month war, ending in the occupation of Moldova’s eastern area, on the left bank of the Dniester river. The occupation is still there. The war was lost because Moldova was, at that time, totally covered by the propaganda potential of the media from the Russian Federation. As Moldova joined the Council of Europe in 1995 and it recognized the European Convention of Human Rights, prerequisites for the promotion and development of free media appeared in the country.

Namely from 1995 through 2001, under the coverage and with the participation of the subdivisions of the Council of Europe, the Journalists Union from Moldova essentially contributed to shaping and strengthening the democratic principles of work of the free press. Namely then, the principles of the relationships between the free media and journalists with the state and society were shaped. The Journalists Union drafted and submitted the Parliament a National Concept on promoting and developing the free media, which was adopted in February, 1999. Holding a permanent dialogue with the ruling structures, the Journalists Union participated in drafting laws on the public broadcasting, on the local media, critically debated on the adoption of the Press Law. Following mutually accepted commitments with the state structures pursuing to avoid excessive regulation, the Journalists Union, in cooperation with the Media Division of the Council of Europe, drafted and adopted the Ethical Code of the Journalist from the Republic of Moldova, co-signed by all the media-dealing NGOs. At monthly sittings of the National Press Club, organized by the Journalists Union and having politicians, the country’s leaders, parliamentarians and different personalities from the civil society as invitees, hot issues related to the construction of a democratic society were debated. All the activities started from the prerequisite that, without free media, built to function on democratic principles, Moldova had no chances to assert itself as a democratic state.

In order to strengthen the journalistic guild, to prepare them to integrate into the European professional sector, the Journalists Union organized, till 2001, tens of seminars, symposiums, work-shops, conferences, congresses. They were attended by journalists from all the types of media, by national and international experts from Germany, France, Switzerland, Great Britain, Norway, Poland, Romania. From 1995 through 2001, the Journalists Union, in its capacity of a representative organization of professional journalists managed to assert itself within society as one of the most active and most present in the professional and civil life of Moldova, as an organization of public reference and as an important professional authority. The membership in the Union meant then and still means for journalists the recognition of their certain professional skills, drawing the esteem and respect of colleague and society. At the same time, this capacity also obliges to responsibility and correctitude.

The economic crisis caused by the ruble’s crash in August 1998 hit the former Soviet republics and undermined Moldova’s democratic development. The Communists Party speculated on the hardships of the crisis and climbed to power in February 2001, wagging populist and extremist slogans. The attempt by the Journalists Union to continue the dialogue with the Communist government to further strengthen the position of the free press failed. The Communists’ offer left no double interpretations summing up to a single solution: the institutional and ideological drafting of the Journalists Union as was the model of the Soviet practice. Evidently, the Journalists Union could not accept that offer, what unleashed a campaign of marginalizing and denigrating the institution. First, the Communist government ordered the creation of a parallel entity with the pretentious name “the league of professional journalists”, logistically and financially supported by the power. Right the president of the country – also the leader of the Communists Party and a former general of Soviet militsia -- attended its first inauguration sitting. The message was clear: abandoning the Journalists Union and the unconditional enrollment into “the league” that some journalists correctly nicknamed as “the league of communist journalists.”

Economic and financial attacks followed. As a result, the Journalists Union was abusively deprived of property, even the news conference room in the premises of the Press House. The attacks were accompanied by intimidations against the Union’s president and members. Ordered by the government, the Union’s basic organizations, territorial branches and the branches in state company Teleradio Moldova, official news agency Moldpres, in all the media outlets that were swallowed by the ruling Communist party were forbidden. The campaign pursued to decrease the Union’s impact over media employees, and society, too. However, the Journalists Union was among the organizers and actively participated in all the key protests manifestations unleashed against censorship at the state institution Teleradio Moldova in 2002. The Union stood by the journalists from that Company during the entire period of 4 months of strike against massive dismissals on political criteria unleashed by the Communist power in July-November 2004. The forces were unequal, and the power managed to take under its full control this important institution of public information in 2006.

With the same abusive, anti-constitutional methods, the communist rule took hold of most of state-owned newspapers, of a series of TV channels and radio stations. Through the Broadcasting Coordinating Council, the national regulating authority, the communist power compelled other media to abstain from airing news, commentaries, not to organize debates, programs of political dialogue and interactive programs with the public, leaving no public space for debates. The Journalists Union protested and held a series of public debates in open air, from December 10, 2007 through 10 December, 2008, on Sundays, attended by tens of thousands of citizens, journalists, politicians, opinion directors. From 2001to 2009, the Journalists Union has been the resistance center of the Moldovan professional journalists against the attempts of the Communist power to take under its total control the people’s information sources and thus to break Moldova’s pursuit of democracy. The apex of this resistance was the year 2009, which saw two electoral races, especially aggressive. Tens of probes and trials were started against independent media and journalists, including against the leaders of the Journalists Union. However, but a small number of independent media outlets managed to resist and informed their audiences about the most important events and phenomena which were hidden by state media and the Communist-backed outlets. These journalists, members of the Journalists Union, these media reported, promptly and boldly, about the murders committed by police, about the involvement of the Communist and state officials in devastating the buildings of the Parliament and Presidency on April 7 , 2009, about the high-scale fraud of the parliamentary elections of 5 April.

Due to the intransigent position of the independent media, due to the courage of the journalists, who did not hesitate to inform the people truthfully and fully, under the threat of death, the democratic forces, joined in an Alliance for European Integration won the 29 July elections, in Moldova. This event opens a new perspective for Moldova’s further fate. Indubitably, this prospect is linked, as can be read from the name of the ruling Alliance, to the European values. Hopefully, a very tragic period from Moldova’s recent history ends here. Tragic, because under the communist rule, Moldova missed the European integration train, taken by the Baltic and East-European countries, being turned into the poorest, most corrupt and miserable country on this continent and not only. General Voronin’s Communist regime, backed by high political and also religious circles from Moscow, tried to isolate Moldova from democratic Europe with a wall of hatred and ignorance. The attempt however failed because the Moldovan journalists, few in number in this struggle, but helped by the big force of the truth, did their duty as their profession required.

The Moldovan Journalists Union gets out from this period of the Communist revanche lasting for almost a decade. It gets out without properties, without sources of subsistence, truncated and decimated, only with its name in store. It’s true, with a stainless name, a name bringing more value to the heritage of professional dignity and verticality, kept with so much sacrifice. It’s also true that, having such a heritage it’s much easier to start re-building the organization and guild, which was shattered and set on barricades by the communist regime.

These days, the Journalists Union has resumed its dialogue with the new democratic authorities viewing the reform of the sector. The reform pursues to set the foundations of a new stage in the development of free media, interrupted by the communist rule. But it’s not possible to insure efficient and rapid reconstruction without the sympathetic support on behalf of the fellow-journalists from the European countries, without the support of the International and European Federation of Journalists.

Using this occasion, here in Europe’s heart, the Journalists Union from Moldova calls to the solidarity and help on all the unions and associations of journalists from Europe.

Valeriu Saharneanu,
Journalists Union from Moldova
7 - 9 November, 2009
BERLIN