Natalia Morar, the Moldovan Twitter Revolutionary, house arrest lifted.

international | politics / elections | other press

Sunday April 26, 2009 15:13

by funderland

Natalia Morar , the 25 year old journalist whose twitter use sparked off the events of April 6th in Moldova in which a crowd of over 10,000 young people demonstrated forceably against the government and burnt the parliament, has had her house-arrest lifted. On April 9, Natalia Morar was officially charged by the Moldovan government with "calls for organizing and staging mass disturbances." She has spent the period since April 15th under house arrest and has just given her first interview published in English to the BBC.

{".........She faces 15 years in prison, but strongly denies any involvement in the violence. The authorities, she says, have shown her no photos, videos or any other evidence to substantiate the charges against her. It all started in a Chisinau cafe, when Ms Morar and a handful of friends decided to hold a peaceful protest against the Communist victory in what they thought was a rigged election. "It just happened through Twitter, the blogosphere, the internet, SMS, websites and all this stuff. We just met, we brainstormed for 15 minutes, and decided to make a flash mob [internet-organised spontaneous public gathering]... "In several hours, 15,000 people came out into the street."..............}

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8018017.stm

Her first interview on the event was naturally given in Romanian, the language of Moldova though for political reasons there it is called Moldovan, and that interview was published by the Romanian daily newspaper Adevarul in its "mobile" section. http://www.adevarul.ro/mobil/articol/creierul-revoltei-....html

During the protests three people died and after the first death Natalia Morar took to addressing a crowd chanting a variety of slogans ranging from the quipish "down with Communist" to more sinister displays of a far-right ideology of recent interest from Ireland to Bolivia as you can see in the embedded Youtube video.

The translation of Morar's words are :-

Youth! Those who have come after our appeal. Listen, please! There, near the parliament there is one dead body already. Lets not fall to the provocations there. There blood of the people flow, lets not fall to the provocations. We are asking you to act peacefully...

which is very stirring stuff & diplomatically put to boot. Morar is not the only individual to face charges arising from the incident now dubbed "the twitter revolution". A prominent Ukranian businessman is accused of paying for the travel costs which brought so many Romanians from neighbouring Romania to the Moldovan capital so quickly. Readers might remember the Moldovan government accused the Romanian state of fomenting an annexation coup d'etat, pointing out that the young people who sacked the parliament were waving Romanian flags.

That would be a damning observation were it not for the fact that the Romanian flag and Moldovan flag are almost exactly the same except for a crest in the centre of the tricolour. It is indeed cheaper to knock up flags without crests which at first glance could be Romanian or Moldovan or to be precise Andorran. Notwithstanding nobody to date has accused anyone of paying for the travel costs of Andorrans to leave their Pyrenean tax paradise and travel to Moldova to foment revolution. Strange, since as speakers of Catalan, the Andorrans just might have had little difficulty following instructions or booking into hotel rooms. Though as written, to date Andorra really isn't playing a part in this, and so can enjoy its general election being held today in relative peace undisturbed by nosey speculation.
& if that election is anything like the last one (whose only report in the English language may be read here - http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=69542 ) then weather of either the good or bad variety will naturally influence voter apathy.

You can read all about the Moldovan 2009 unrest on wikipedia and compare flags at this link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Moldova_civil_unrest

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Natalia Morar, the Moldovan Twitter Revolutionary, house arrest lifted.