The Moldovan authorities must ensure that yesterday’s historic Pride march in the capital Chisinau is the “first of many” and is followed up by other steps in combating homophobic discrimination, Amnesty International said today.

Around 100 people participated in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) Pride parade, the first such event in Moldova.

The march, which was organized by Gender-Doc Moldova, a national NGO working on LGBTI issues, was stopped early due to threats from counter-demonstrators.

“This is a red-letter day for LGBTI rights in Moldova; now the authorities must publicly support Pride marches and enable this event to be the first of many of its kind,” said Amnesty International’s David Diaz-Jogeix, Deputy Director of Europe and Central Asia Programme.

“The abrupt ending of the march shows more still needs to be done in the fight against discrimination in Moldova. If the LGBTI movement is allowed to blossom, a more tolerant society will follow.”

Sunday’s march passed off peacefully but was curtailed after counter demonstrators found out where the event was being held.

Before the parade, an Orthodox Bishop from the city of Bălţi called on priests, Afghanistan war veterans and Chisinau residents to resist the march.

Around a thousand counter-demonstrators gathered in the city centre on Sunday to protest against the march and the Law on Ensuring Equality – the anti-discrimination legislation that came into effect in January.

Amnesty International has called on the Moldovan authorities to amend the law so that it clamps down on discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in all areas of life.

Discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation is explicitly prohibited only in employment, while discrimination on the grounds of gender identity is not explicitly prohibited in the law.

“The authorities must publicly acknowledge the seriousness of discrimination against LGBTI individuals and the need to take concerted action to address it,” said David Diaz-Jogeix.

“That means condemning any homophobic remarks made by politicians or members of the public.”

Organizers had to change the location of the march three days before the event due to the fear of counter-demonstrations. The final route was only agreed on Saturday after police warned of a security risk.

In March last year local councils in Bălţi, the villages of Chetriş and Hiliuţi in Făleşti District and the Anenii Noi District took openly discriminatory measures to forbid any kind of promotion of LGBTI rights. Only one council repealed its decision upon intervention by the Ombudsperson.

On 12 June, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the banning of an LGBTI demonstration in May 2005 in Chisinau had violated the right to freedom of assembly as well as the right not to be discriminated against.

Unidentified individuals broke into Chisinau’s Metropolitan Jewish Cemetery earlier this week and caused “serious damage” to graves, according to a report on Thursday in Jewish.ru, a Moscow-based news site.

Russia’s Jewish News Agency reported dozens of headstones and graves were destroyed in what appeared to be the work of unlicesensed loggers who had felled dozens of healthy trees.

Falling timber apparently smashed some headstones. The paths are still blocked by debris and fallen branches, the website Jewish.ru reported.

The Moldovan government and city officials did not issue a statement directly after the incident, nor have they stated whether they regarded the incident as anti-Semitic, according to the report.

The damage was discovered just ahead of the April 6 anniversary of the Chisinau pogrom of 1903, which resulted in the murder of nearly 50 Jews.

Hundreds more were wounded in the three-day killing spree, which provoked an international outcry and which helped shape the thinking of Ze’ev Zabotinsky, a founding Zionist who advocated Jews take up arms to defend themselves.

Locals perpetrated another, smaller pogrom in 1905. Many of the victims of those pogroms are buried in the damaged cemetery.

Moldova had a Jewish population of 350,000 before the Holocaust, according to the European Jewish Congress. Today, approximately 20,000 Jews live in Moldova.

by Nicky Larkin

There are not many borders in Europe where the cops sell ecstasy. There are also not many countries in Europe currently boasting one hundred per-cent employment. In Transnistria it seems they have it all sorted. The only problem is the country doesn’t officially exist. And they hate you Jews.

Also, you don’t get to keep the pills. It’s a clever recycling initiative. Anyone clueless enough to purchase drugs from the man with the gun in the uniform, will subsequently be greeted by another man with a gun in a uniform about ten miles down the road. The ecstasy is found, the bribe is paid, and the merchandise whisked back to the border for the next clown’s misfortune.

It’s highly symbolic as the outsiders entrance into this murky, but fascinating, little anti-Semitic corner of Europe.

A breakaway territory in the east of Moldova, Transnistria is a thin sliver of land bordering Ukraine, separated from the rest of Moldova by the Dniester river. Michael Palin went there and had a laugh, but he was from the BBC and had a big camera crew, so he only saw the marching bands and didn’t get offered any pills. He doesn’t look like the type anyway.

I didn’t have a big camera crew or the BBC. I had a Lada with a cracked window, a chain-smoking driver, and a very bad hangover. I also had Frank, and he needed to vomit. We were much more Monty Python than Michael Palin.

The Transnistrians have been quite open about their anti-Semitism. Home to a small Jewish community, the local Synagogue was targeted with a pipe-bomb attack in 2001. The reason – to celebrate Hitler’s birthday. In 2004 a Russian Neo-Nazi group went at it again; this time trying to burn down the Synagogue with a Molotov Cocktail.

Most shockingly of all, 70 tombstones in the Jewish cemetery were vandalized with anti-Semetic graffiti. The Transnistrian authorities refused to clean it up. It was a very clear message – two fingers to you Jews – from the bitter little country that doesn’t even exist.

So as that Lada rattled towards the made-up border, I had all sorts of pre-conceived ideas as to what it would be like inside this murky micro-nation. The EU has called Transnistria “a black hole in which illegal trade in arms, the trafficking in human beings and the laundering of criminal finance was carried on.” The locals are even subject to a night-time curfew. Would we even get in?

To have any chance of crossing the border you need a Russian speaker. Without this essential element you won’t even get offered the chance to buy ecstasy in the first place. You’ll be shaken down, turned around, and sent back to wherever you came from. But we were sorted – our Lada-driving chain-smoker spoke both Moldovan and Russian.

As we approached the border our driver stopped. He turned around, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and demanded we hand him over our passports and stay in the car. The Department of Foreign Affairs would definitely frown upon sitting in a Lada with no passport, on the border of a country that doesn’t exist. With a cracked window….

But not for the first time, the Paddy passport worked its charm. Even the border guards in this shady non-existent country thought being Irish was hilarious, and they didn’t even know about that whole IMF money disaster thing and that we were all paupers again. Or maybe they just knew us Irish aren’t too keen on you big nasty Israelis either. They must read The Guardian too. Either way, a Spud-Head victory. We were in.

Despite being repeatedly urged by NATO to withdraw from Transnistria, our chain-smoking driver laughed as he pointed at the imposing Russian army base visible from the road into Tiraspol, the capital city. The Russians have permanently positioned an old Soviet tank – complete with hammer and sickle – facing across the Dniester, a symbolic message in case those bloody Moldovans get notions of reclaiming land still internationally recognized as theirs.

I spent the previous few nights in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, and experienced the sparse aesthetic of Europe’s poorest per-capita country. So on my way into Tiraspol I expected more babushkas at bus stops. Instead I got teenage skaters in baggy jeans and baseball caps, doing tricks in front of that Soviet tank.

But perhaps the most striking thing about Tiraspol is the huge billboards positioned all over the city, displaying the stern image of Putin’s watchful face – making sure the locals don’t get notions. Putin’s pissed on every lamppost in the city; firmly marked his territory in his strategic little enclave.

But despite the billboards, Transnistria is officially self-governed, with their own parliament, police and postal system.

They even designed their own flag and currency, and came up with a new national anthem. One can only imagine that particular meeting…

Fresh from months of war; bent, bandaged and bedraggled in a bullet-riddled building, armed to the teeth with crayons and sketchpads. Pure Monty Python territory – a poster competition for militant separatists. Accompanied on piano by a liquored-up land-mine victim, bashing out the chords, trying to come up with a national anthem with his good arm.  And if that went well, he’d have a go at the Eurovision too.

But sadly for these piano-playing separatists, despite geographically being in Europe, Transnistria doesn’t qualify for the Eurovision. These anti-Semites don’t really qualify for anything. Transnistria’s political status remains up in the air. It’s unrecognized internationally, yet in effect an independent state. This sketchy political status has its definite benefits.

It is widely alleged that the Russians now run all their dirty work through Transnistria. People trafficking, weapons and drugs, along with the disposal of nuclear waste. And why not; the place doesn’t even exist after all. It’s the perfect little set-up for keeping your hands clean. As long as you piss on all the lampposts.

Transnistria posed me many difficult questions. Who is responsible for this anti-Semetic encouragement – the refusal to clean up the 70 vandalized Jewish tombstones? Is it Russia, running their little proxy-state, or is it the actual Transnistrian separatists themselves?  And if so, why, in this obscure part of the world, is it bizarrely anti-Semitic in the first place?

Also, despite the dark allegations, the murky political set-up, and the very fact the state doesn’t officially exist, the quality of life for those baggy-jeaned skaters in front of that big Soviet tank seemed so much higher than on the other side of the Dniestr river, on the grim streets of Chisinau. The conclusions drawn from this alone are confusing. How can the standard of living be higher in this shady anti-Semetic banana republic, than in either of the two real authentic countries that surround it?

Or maybe it’s all much simpler. Maybe that chain-smoking Lada-driver pulled a pure Palin on me too.

This is the only remaining working synagogue in a city which boasted 77 synagogues before 1940.

Chief Rabbi Zalman Abelsky, a follower of the Lubavicher Rebbe, says that very few people, barely more than a minyan, attend Shabbat services, and only 20-25 turn up on major festivals.

This year, once again, city authorities refused to allow the Jewish community to put a Chanukiah in the town centre.

“Last year the Jewish Community wanted to install the Chanukiah near the Chekhov Theatre, in the centre of town, but the mayor responded with irritation and recommended we install it near the monument of the 1941 ghetto. In other words, they believe that our place is in the ghetto,” said Ilya Mariash, the editor of internet news site Jewish Village, published in Russian.

The mayor, Dorin Chirtoaca, is the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, which is part of the centre-right coalition, the Alliance for European Integration. His party leader, Mihai Ghimpu, argues that the mayor has to carry out a balancing act.

“These problems are not simple, they are delicate. The mayor wanted to avoid a row, you can see how the church calls protests outside parliament every so often. You may recall that this row was started by the church,” said Mr Ghimpu.

And indeed, in December 2009, a group of Christian Orthodox believers, led by the priest Anatolie Cibric, removed the Chanukiah which had been installed, with permission, in the city’s central park.

The 2010 Human Rights Report of the US State Department on Moldova reads: “A crowd led by Moldovan Orthodox priest Anatolie Cibric gathered, engaged in antisemitic speech, dismantled and removed the menorah from its base.”

Mr Cibric was unrepentant: “Chanukiah means illumination, we have been illuminated by Christ’s light and we don’t need to be illuminated by other religions. They can install their symbols outside their headquarters, but to install this symbol in a public square named after Saint Stephen the Great it like an invasion”, he said. He also denied any allegation of antisemitism: “It’s like a flag planted on the Reichstag, that’s Chanukiah in the capital of a state. The allegation of antisemitism is a business project of the Jews. I deny this allegation of antisemitism, I don’t protest against Jews, I protest against symbols forced upon us.”

By Petru Clej

Overgrown cemeteries are all that remain of most outlying shtetls and long-abandoned synagogues that lay in ruins in the city, home to the notorious 1903 pogrom that prompted Theodor Herzl to propose his controversial Uganda plan as a temporary Zionist refuge.

Chisinau once had 70 synagogues; today there is just one. As Alexander Pinchevsky said of the remaining house of worship, “It’s not good enough; it spoils the image of the Jewish community.”

Pinchevsky is one of two Jewish local tycoons working to restore some dignity to the remnant and memory of Bessarabia’s historic Jewish community amid its present despair and disrepair. And they have received backing from a surprising source: a man responsible for moving many of the country’s Jews to Israel who now says he can rejuvenate the community with the help of local volunteers — with an eye on Natalie Portman and Rahm Emanuel.

That’s all taking place in a small, landlocked Eastern European nation with a bitter and violent recent history. In the 20th century alone, the country traded back and forth between the Russian Empire, Romania and the Soviet Union. About 20 years ago an independent Moldova emerged, one wracked with civil war and grinding poverty.

The Jews fared even worse. Late 19th and early 20th century pogroms and persecution were succeeded by German concentration camps, death marches and mass, unmarked graves in the forests. Liberation at World War II’s end turned into nearly five decades of Soviet oppression. Independence has brought little respite.

So it was no surprise that when the Iron Curtain fell, Jews who were able fled. From a pre-World War II height of some 400,000 Jews, today there are 12,000 to 15,000 in the country, mostly in Chisinau. The small community is a weak one, beset with massive assimilation. Many are elderly and poor. And the long tradition of anti-Semitism has not abated, nor has government indifference to it.

“The one thing we want is to know that tomorrow there will not be a pogrom, that they won’t come and throw us in the river,” said Anatholy Leibovitch, whose many local businesses include facilitating Israelis investing in Moldova

For the past decade, efforts to keep the community afloat have been mostly borne by Pinchevsky and Alexander Bilinkis. They serve as co-chairmen of The Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Moldova and have been funding activities from their own pockets.

Pinchevsky 56, is a businessman with interests across the Moldovan economy, from a chain of gas stations to malls and health clubs. He also sits on the Moldova Olympic Committee.

Bilinkis, 44, has a company that produces canned pickles and baby food. He also makes kosher wine.

Most of their efforts have focused on welfare for survivors and establishing Holocaust commemorations. Community events and celebrations are largely left to the traditional outside aid groups such as the Jewish Agency for Israel or the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

Now the two community leaders want to restore a small portion of the city’s grand Jewish past.

They are leading a group with an ambitious plan to restore the historic yeshiva named for Yehuda Leib Tsirelson, the chief rabbi of Bessarabia, as the region was once known. The only Jewish member of parliament in Romania, he was killed when the invading Germans bombed Chisinau.

Pinchevsky and Bilinkis, along with eight other wealthy Moldovan Jews, already have donated $660,000 to buy back the derelict shell of the building. They need $3.4 million more for renovations, much of which will have to come from outside the country, Pinchevsky said.

Plans call for the renovated building to house a synagogue, yeshiva, mikvah, kosher restaurant and market. The structure is intended to be a focal point for the community and host events such as a 600-person communal Passover seder organized by the philanthropists for the first time this year.

The effort to reinvigorate the community is catching a boost from an unlikely source.

Chaim Chessler has done more than anyone in recent times to deplete the number of Jews in Moldova, which numbered about 90,000 on the eve of independence. As the head of the Jewish Agency delegation to the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, he oversaw the massive aliyah to Israel. At one stage he was sending 500 Moldovans a day to the Jewish state, he said.

“Maybe I’m guilty, or responsible, for taking those I could to Israel, but now I also feel responsible to those who remain,” he said.

Since leaving the agency, he founded Limmud FSU in 2005, an organization that brings Jewish learning to Jews throughout the former Soviet Union. This month, the group hosted its first conference in Moldova; more than 400 people showed up – approximately 360 of them from Moldova and the rest from Russian and Ukraine.

Chessler believes that the key to Limmud’s success is its reliance on volunteers, which gives the local community a sense of ownership over the program. “Much of the idea of Limmud is to return the pride to the community, to give them renewed energy,” he said.

But Chessler, a consummate showman with a restless energy, also is superb in the use of celebrity to give his program added gloss. He uses the emotional appeal of his projects to draw in the rich and famous, who then attach their luster to Limmud and the local community.

For this program, he brought American philanthropist and businessman Matthew Bronfman — chair of Limmud FSU’s steering committee — to discover his ancestors’ hometowns. Bronfman, in turn, used his clout to persuade Moldovan Prime Minister Vlad Filat to attend Limmud’s opening, an unprecedented stamp of government approval for the beleaguered Jewish community.

And Chessler knows who he wants for the next Limmud.

“We have to target Natalie Portman,” he said. “Her family is from Moldova; we have to get in touch with her. And also [Chicago Mayor and former Obama White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel. He is difficult to reach, so we have a job to do.”

Such efforts may give Chisinau’s Jews hope for a more vibrant community, but saving the smaller, outlying communities — shells of the shtetls of the past — seems unlikely.

One, Soroca, is on the border with Ukraine. It once had 18,000 Jews; only 100 are left and only 20 of them are Jewish according to Jewish law, said community head Semyon Weksler.

The glory of his community is clearly in the past.

“I have the cleanest cemetery in all of Moldova.” Weksler said with pride. “Ask anyone who has visited.”

Still, he seems undeterred in his task.

“Frankly speaking,” he said, “there are not going to be any Jews here in the near future. We will try and do everything we can so this light does not fade away.”

Artists, scientists and musicians from Israel, the United States and the former Soviet republics will attend the four-day conference, which began Thursday in this country of 4.1 million with a population of 20,000 Jews

More than 60,000 Jews died during the Holocaust in Moldova, killed by the Nazis and on the orders of Romanian fascist wartime leader Ion Antonescu. Thousands of Jews emigrated to Israel after 1948, including Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who was born in Chisinau. Moldova was formerly part of Romania, but the Soviet Union took control of it in 1944.

The conference is organized by Limmud FSU, a group that supports and reinforces Jewish education and identity.