* At least 60 children aged between 13 and 18 were maltreated by the “people of the law” after the April 2009 events, according to our investigations.
*Although more than a year has passed, none of the policemen has been held accountable and only one case of a juvenile–victim of the policemen has been filed with the court.
“Down! Hands behind your head!” A series of blows follows – random kicking and punching – in the head, under the ribs… This is not an episode from a thriller but it is the horror film lived by a child on 7 April 2009. He is one of those over 60 juveniles who were maltreated by the policemen as a result of the violent events of one year ago (in the absence of official numbers, we have prepared the list of victims by ourselves, from various sources). One can still see the fear on their faces, and their voices reveal distrust and lack of confidence.
“Down! Hand behind your head!”
 |
| Vitalie Iurcu |
In the evening of 7 April 2009, Vitalie Iurcu, aged 14, was arrested twice by policemen. He had come to the Great National Assembly Square out of curiosity, at around 9.30 PM, to see the protests. He stayed there not more than ten minutes and started off to his home, but in front of the Patria Movie Theater he was detained by policemen. “They shouted: “Get down and put your hands behind your head!” and started to hit me. In a few minutes they lifted me, I told them I was minor, and they let me go,” Vitalie recounts. By the Arc of Triumph, like in a deja vu, the police officers of the Fulger Special Destination Squad ordered him to lie on the ground and put his hands behind his head. “They beat me hard. They were hitting mercilessly,” the boy recalls. He was taken to the Buiucani Police Station where he sat on his knees for 2 or 3 hours, facing the wall and his hands behind his back. “One movement made or statement uttered was followed by kicks and punches into the kidneys. Around 5 AM I was taken to the Placement Center for Juveniles. They didn’t beat me there but I saw how a policeman slapped and kicked a boy in his back because he didn’t want to recognize I don’t know what documents,” Vitalie confesses.
On the following day, when Valentina Iurcu went to take her child from the Juvenile Center, Vitalie had obvious traces of violence. “He had bruises on his face and on his body. His coat was torn and his clothes were dirty,” the woman says. Only in June 2009 did the Iurcu family decide to appeal to a lawyer, at the boy’s insistence. “From 19 June to 15 October 2009, the prosecutors did nothing but take explanations from the policemen, after which I received an order on refusal to start criminal investigations,” the lawyer Iurie Oancea recounts. According to him, Vitalie’s case will reach the ECHR if the prosecutor’s office further delays or refuses to start criminal investigations.
People of the Law, Outlawed
The events of April 2009 only stressed that those called “people of the law” act many times outside the law, even in relation to the juveniles. “It is no news that the juveniles are maltreated in detention but in April we witnessed the peak of wrongdoings,” the child’s lawyer Tamara Plămădeală says. The lawyer Victor Zaharia from the Institute for Penal Reforms (IPR) says that any of those over 60 juveniles detained had legal grounds to ask for a lawyer or to file a complaint directly with the Prosecutor’s Office: “A number of their rights were flagrantly violated; a basic one of them being the lack of access to qualified legal assistance,” V. Zaharia says.
For Three Days, She Didn’t Know Where Her Child Was
After the events of 7 and 8 April, most of the parents of the juveniles arrested by the law-enforcement bodies didn’t know for days in a row where their children were, although the law says that the police is obliged to notify within 24 hours the juvenile’s parents or guardian about the place and grounds for his/her detention. This is also the case of Iulian Lopatenco, aged 14. His mother Aurelia Lopatenco didn’t know anything about her child for nearly three days. On 7 April he left home, which is in the commune of Băcioi under Chişinău, to go to the musical school. His mother took him from the Sorting Center only on 10 April when she was finally informed where Iulian was. “Nobody explained to me precisely what the reason for his detention was,” Aurelia Lopatenco recalls, revolted. The woman was seized with horror when her son told her what had happened to him. “They hit him with a water bottle on his head, so that not to leave signs of violence on his body, without knowing that the boy is invalid of the third degree,” the juvenile’s mother recounts. “He was insulted, humiliated, I found out that he had cried. God only knows what other unlawful actions he had to endure.” Although she consulted a lawyer, Aurelia Lopatenco decided not to file a complaint against the policemen in order to protect her child from additional stress.
The psychologist Lilia Gorceag, however, thinks that this is a wrong decision: “On the contrary, if the child, during the investigations, under his parent’s and psychologist’s supervision, understands that the policeman who had tortured him is punished, he will regain confidence in the state’s institutions. Otherwise, there is a risk that this child will develop a delinquent conduct.”
Just One Case Deferred to Justice
 |
| Prosecutor Ion Grosu |
Policemen Took Their Revenge on Children
 |
| Chiril Gumeni with parents |
The boy was beaten almost to death, alike other young people who were “hunted” and maltreated by the policemen in the days following the violent actions of 7 April. According to the testimonies of a number of policemen, “the people of the law” acted in that way to take their revenge on their colleagues at whom stones had been thrown during the manifestations. Chiril was taken to the Buiucani Police Station where the policemen continued to beat him brutally by kicking him. They stopped only when they saw that he couldn’t stand up any more. Instead of calling the ambulance, the policemen took Chiril, who was blood-stained and almost unconscious, near the school where he studies and left him there. “I was in terrible pains. I asked a woman who was passing by to help me and she called the ambulance,” the boy barely recalls. “At the hospital I found out that I had my left leg broken in two places,” the child says while his father’s eyes become full with tears. “My heart was aching, he is our only child. I also had my left leg broken, but it happened in the Nistru War. For what did I fight? So that my boy is destroyed like this by those who should defend him?” Chiril Gumeni’s father wonders.
300 Euros for Silence
Chiril Gumeni’s case repeatedly came into the prosecutors’ sight, after the suspected policeman had tried to influence the investigations by “buying” the victim’s silence. On 10 February inst., the prosecutors started criminal investigations “of the fact that the police officer Bârliba tried to influence the juvenile Gumeni into changing his statements made about the police officer Octavian Guţu,” as shown in a press release issued by the Ministry of Interior. “Mister Policeman wanted to give us 300 Euros so that we withdrew our accusations but we didn’t accept,” Chiril Gumeni’s mother says.
System Limps
Referring to the events of April 2009, the lawyer Igor Dolea, who is member of the Superior Council of Magistracy, states that in the cases of arrest of the juveniles the flagrant violation of their rights was obvious during both their arrest and their detention. The IPR lawyer Victor Zaharia is of the same opinion. He thinks that Justice for Children should be instituted which would ensure observance of the rights of juveniles arrested or kept in detention, so that their physical, mental and moral integrity is not affected. Igor Dolea believes that “unfortunately, we don’t have judges, nor lawyers specialized in juvenile issues, there is no institution of the psychologist or pedagogue in the law-enforcement institutions, as required by the Criminal Procedure Code; in fact, the state doesn’t have any penal policies with regard to juvenile justice.”
This investigation has been produced within the Journalists for Human Rights Media Campaign, implemented by the Investigative Journalism Center with the support of the US Embassy in Moldova. The responsibility for this article belongs to the author.