Strasbourg, 22/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - Symbolic of the “frozen conflicts” which divide some member countries of the Council of Europe, the judgment given on Friday by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemns Russia in an affair brought to Strasbourg by 170 parents and children from the Moldovan community of Transnistria. In question is Article 2 of Protocol No 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights - the right to education. This is a right of which children from three schools situated in Ribnita, Tighina and Grigoriopol have been robbed, according to the defendants, who were confirmed in their grievances by the Court.
The facts date back to 2002 and 2004 and centre around the linguistic laws in force in this unrecognised separatist entity in Moldova, on the eastern bank of the Dnieper. With the majority Slavic-speakers, Transnistria did not accept the choice of Romanian as the only official language of Moldova in June 1990. The region therefore requested to remain within Russia following the example of what was done for the enclave of Kaliningrad on the edge of the Baltic, and it proclaimed itself the “Dniester Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic” on 2 September 1990. Violence then ensued between the two armed forces of the Republic of Moldova and the Russian-speaking militia of Transnistria supported by the 14th Russian army stationed permanently on its territory. In June 1991, having chosen Tiraspol as the capital, the self-proclaimed republic unofficially and partially abandoned the communist ideology and gradually took the direction of a market economy, but without renouncing its vague desires for attachment to Russia which were confirmed by a referendum organised in September 2006. Ninety-seven point one per cent of what is now the “Dniester Moldovan Republic” (DMR) voted in favour.
In this framework, the “law on languages” enacted in 1992 confirms the non-recognition of the Moldovan government by the DMR and proclaims three official languages - Russian, Ukrainian and Moldovan written with the Cyrillic alphabet. It is on the latter point that the affair judged at the ECHR last week rests. The three schools concerned continued to use the Latin alphabet to teach Moldovan-Romanian. One of the schools was closed and moved 20km away to Moldovan territory, and the other two were forced to move to less suitable locations which were less well-equipped in their town of origin. All three were then dependent on the aid of the Moldovan government which pays the teachers' salaries and supplies school material and a bus for the school that has been relocated to a town not serviced by public transport. All this has been dotted with bag searches, identity checks, harassment, vandalism to the school premises - even injuries and intimidation, as the parents were apparently threatened with the loss of their jobs or having their parental rights cut.
Blamed in the complaint, the Moldovan government gave its defence by recalling the historic context of Transnistria and the military support of Russia to the separatist regime of the DMR - support which continued after the military confrontations by financial support “which apparently took the form of a subsidised gas supply and of million of US dollars paid every year for retirement pensions and aid to schools, hospitals and prisons.” Moscow retorted that the case of the claimants had nothing to do with the conflict and that nothing pointed to Russia having been directly involved in the fate of the children concerned. As for its aid to the schools, prisons and hospitals, it would be comparable to humanitarian aid… These arguments did not convince the judges in Strasbourg as Russia had been condemned in this affair on the grounds that “the separatist regime would not have been able to exist without Russia's military, economic and political support, and that hence the closure of the schools pertained to its jurisdiction in the sense of the Convention”.
Moscow is thus forced to pay €6,000 to each of the claimants for moral damage and €50,000 to all the claimants as a whole. The Republic of Moldova had its efforts to help the claimants recognised. For the Court, Russia's arguments did not hold water and it gave for the proof the fact that Russia did not reveal the arms store in Colbasna situated on Moldovan territory and this was in spite of commitments taken before the international community. As for the financial support to Transnistria, it was noted - without Russian denial - that the region only pays for a small part of the gas which is delivered to it by Gazprom, and that the fact that only 20% of its population is active underlines the importance of the Russian pensions for the local economy.
In the opinion of Jean-Claude Mignon, the president of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, the institution has a card to play in the Transnistrian conflict which has lasted for more than 20 years. Russia and Moldova count among its 47 member states, the parliamentarians of the two countries meet at the Strasbourg sessions, and progress would be possible under the dynamic of a Council of Europe supported by the judgments of the ECHR - but until now no concrete measure has yet been advanced in Strasbourg. On the ground, negotiations were resumed in December 2011 in the “5+2” format and bring together Moldova and Transnistria as the parties in conflict, and Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE as mediators, as well as the EU and USA as observers.
It should also be noted that on 28 September, the EU27 decided to put an end to the sanctions which target the leaders of Transnistria, particularly the ban on their travel within the EU. The EU thus means to recognise “the progress realised by the new leading team in the negotiation of certain aspects of the conflict” and to give a boost to the ongoing negotiations, but it is keeping up its sleeve the weapon of banning residence and promises that it will use it if necessary. In the sights of the EU27 are the free movement of people and the question of the “regulation of the problems which continue with regard to the Moldovan schools of Transnistria and teaching being given in the Latin alphabet.” (VL/transl.fl)