Categories: places
Tags: prayer, Moldova, Chisinau, protests
Date: 08 April 2009 12:56:17
Please pray for the country of Moldova, which as many of my readers know I lived in for a couple of months a couple of years ago whilst doing fieldwork for my PhD. On Sunday they had parliamentary and presidential elections, which were overwhelmingly won by the (unpopular) ruling Communist Party, who have already been in power since 2001. Since Monday protests have been held in Piata Marii Adunarii Nationale (PMAN, for those of you following on Twitter), which yesterday became violent with both the Presidential Palace and Parliament building being stormed by protesters. The parliament in particular has been trashed.
I don't know what is going to happen. The (supposedly outgoing, I'm not too sure) president is accusing Romania of involvement in the protests and has expelled the Romanian Ambassador. Russian news agencies are blaming Western agents. Blog posts I have read are accusing the secret services of attending the protests in civvies and taking pictures of protesters. There are reports of up to 100,000 dead people being included on the electoral roll, and in fact the main demand of the protesters is for a recount (which might be going ahead).
The protests are largely (but not exclusively) by young people 18-25. Deeleea sent me an article about how a lot of them mobilised through Twitter, as mobile phone lines are reported to have been blocked. I am worried that once this is over, nothing will have changed. I have hope for future generations, but I really don't know what to think about today. Of course I'm also worried about my friends and colleagues, and hope they're safe.
Here is a link to some photos from PMAN and of the parliament and presidential buildings, that I took in 2007, so you can see what they usually look like. The penultimate photo is the presidential pad, and the last one is the parliament. The rest are of views round PMAN.
And here is a link to some photos from the protests.