Government pressure on the Moldovan media increased in 2001 after the Communist Party won a majority in the February parliamentary elections. The Communist candidate, Vladimir Voronin, was elected president in April. Soon after the presidential elections, the Chisinau-based Independent Journalism Center reported that journalists from the opposition publications Flux, Tara, Jurnal de Chisinau, and Trud-Moldova…
POLITICAL REFORMS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH, along with the advent of democratic governments in Croatia and Serbia, brightened the security prospects for journalists in Central Europe and the Balkans. In contrast, Russian’s new government imposed press restrictions, and authoritarian regimes entrenched themselves in other countries of the former Soviet Union, particularly in Central Asia, further threatening…
STATE PRESSURE ON MOLDOVAN MEDIA REFLECTED broader political tensions between the country’s Romanian- and Russian-speaking citizens. This linguistic conflict, and related questions of sovereignty and identity, motivated government attempts to impose far-reaching restrictions on Russian- and Romanian-language media. Also, the state continued to impose large fines in libel cases, and several newspapers and journalists were…
New York, July 17, 2000–The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply disturbed by the death threats made by unknown persons against independent Moldovan journalist, Andrei Turcanu. According to CPJ sources, Turcanu began receiving calls threatening him and his family with “extermination” after he published an article on June 30 reporting on possible corruption in…