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Organized Online, Students Storm Gov't. Buildings In Moldova

Posted by timothy on from the no-emoticon-for-what-I-feel dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Reacting to allegedly fraudulent election procedures, students are storming the presidency and parliament of the small eastern European country of Moldova. It is reported that they used Twitter to organize. Currently twitter and blogs are being used to spread word of what is happening since all national news websites have been blocked. If the 1989 Romanian revolution was the first to be televised, is this the first to be led by twitter and social networks?" Jamie points out this interesting presentation (from March 2008) by Ethan Zuckerman about the realities of online activism, including how governments try to constrain it.

3 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Europe... by hkz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From my time in Moldova with native students, all they want is to join up with the rest of Europe and get the show on the road. They're really frustrated at "the Man". There's the Romanians who don't want to reunite the countries (since Moldova is poorer), the Russians who keep feeding the border conflict with Transnistria (fascinating read about that tin pot narco/weapons state: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria ), there's the EU that doesn't even want to consider Moldova as long as there's an unsolved border conflict, there's the communists in power, and so on. Doesn't surprise me much that they're going the same way as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine -- which was much the same circumstances.

    Totally OT: Moldova has the BEST wine and the CRAZIEST Nightclubs. Gotta believe me on that one ;-)

    1. Re:Europe... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Most Romanians want to reunite with Moldova(and I'm talking here about 99.9%), there are thousands of Moldavians in every major University in Romania, in mine too, we speak the same language and share the same culture and history. We even offered to enter the EU together with Moldova as a single country, which we wore before the USSR ripped it away.

      Let me put this clear for you: Romania and Moldova used to be the same country until WWII, The Republic Moldova is just a part of the historic region of Romania called Moldova(since 1359), a big part of it still lies in Romania. The USSR performed ethnic and cultural clensing there, the comunists even went so far as to trying to forbid the teaching of the Romanian language.

      Since before the ellections, Romanian citizens woren't allowed to enter Moldova, and now Moldovan citizens that are currently in Romania aren't allow to go back into their own country !

      There is probably going to be a millitary intervention this night, since the students even assaulted the national television while the president was there in the studio.

      In Romania we went trough something simillar in 1989, it started in the city I'm studying in, Timisoara. A simillar student protest ended in the millitary shooting in the mass of students and killing not only students but everyone who was on the streets. It was a real horror show troughout the country.

      If something simillar happens in Moldova I can only hope it's going to come to a millitary intervention from Romania or NATO. The revolution in Romania ended with over one thousand dead and thousands wounded, most of which wore students. I really hope other countries won't just stand by and let the same thing happen again. It's only come so far because romanian officialls allways wore big cowards afraid to say anything that would upset their Moldavian counterparts, or anyone else for that matter. If they won't do anything this time eyther, we're going to start protesting in the same manner.

  2. Fax, Internet, Same Thing by QuincyDurant · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Soviet Union was crushed by fax machines. Twitter is just sort of a chickenshit fax machine for people who like to run their mouths.

    BTW, good for the students.