CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) – Separatist authorities controlling the Trans-Dniester province in eastern Moldova have detained five opposition Communist leaders who are accused of trying to organize an unauthorized protest, police said Monday.
Communist Party leader Oleg Horjan and another four party leaders were taken into custody Sunday evening accused of disturbing the peace, said Svetlana Antonova, a senior Trans-Dniester intelligence official.
They were distributing leaflets and using loudspeakers asking residents to take part in a demonstration against Trans-Dniester’s authoritarian leader Igor Smirnov, despite being denied a permit to hold the rally in central Tiraspol, the capital of Trans-Dniester, Antonova added. She said that the Communists were offered an alternative location for their rally on Tuesday, but the five leaders were still urging residents to go to the unauthorized location.
The Communists’ former candidate in the region’s presidential elections last December, Nadejda Bondarenko, was also detained. She received eight percent of the vote, second to Smirnov, who won his fourth term in office with 82 percent of the vote.
Trans-Dniester broke away in 1992 after a bloody war with Moldova which left over 1,000 people dead. Russia, which now is a mediator in the conflict, backs the separatists but does not officially recognize Trans-Dniester’s independence.
Both Smirnov, who has ruled the province since 1991 and the Trans-Dniester Communists favor independence from Moldova, which is ruled by pro-Western Communists. The territory is wedged between the Dniester River and Ukraine and is dominated by aging Russian speakers and ex-Soviet military families.
