Over 200 former prisoners of Stalinist camps and their relatives participated on Sunday, June 13, in a protest march in Chisinau against the existing social policies for victims of the communist regime.

The former political prisoners marched on the Stefan cel Mare si Sfant boulevard in the capital, walked to the central railway station, and held there a meeting to the remembrance of "victims of communist repressions".

The protesters carried banners demanding back their properties and land, and describing the communist regime as the "exterminator of 110 million innocent people." They demanded enhanced social protection and respect for their rights, and withdrawal of the Russian troops from Transnistria. The participants accused the Communist authorities of Moldova of failure to fulfill their promises to return properties seized during the Soviet era.

Valentina Sturza, chairwoman of the Association of Former Deported Persons and Political Prisoners (AFDDP), told the meeting that the people who experienced the ordeal of GULAG did receive back their properties nationalized in the Soviet period nor after 12 years since rehabilitation. "By contrary, they had been deprived of the 72-leu (six dollars) indemnity for deported person and facilities for payment of public services, too. A former deported person receives now a 4.5-leu indemnity, Sturza noted.

The Romanian ambassador to Moldova, Filip Teodorescu, told the meeting that the victims of genocide organised by the two powers of evil, fascist and communist, will find peace in an united Europe alone. Moldova's place is in this united Europe, he added.

At the railway station, from where thousands of people had been deported to Siberia in 1940-1950s, Chisinau Mayor-General Serafim Urechean unveiled a plaque on the place for construction of a monument to the remembrance of victims of communist reprisals.

Archive data, which scientists describe as incomplete, show that 13,470 families including a total of 22,648 persons had been deported to Siberia early on June 13, 1941. Women and children count for about two thirds of those persons. The annexation of the territory between the Dniester and Proute rivers to the now defunct Soviet Union in 1944 was followed by another two waves of massive deportations, in 1949 and 1951, with 885,000 persons becoming victims of political repressions.