Moldovan president conveys message of commemoration for victims of Stalinist deportations

Chisinau, 6 July /MOLDPRES/ - President Maia Sandu today conveyed a message on commemoration of the victims of the Stalinist deportations, thereby evoking the tragedy of the tens of thousands of Moldovans exiled to a foreign land and speaking out for keeping their memory alive.   

The head of state stressed that, on the eve of the day of 6 July this year, when we commemorate the tens of thousands of victims of the Stalinist deportations, the National Agency of Archives had made public, for the first time ever, the lists of the Moldovan fellow countrymen exiled to Siberia in 1949.

„Names of men and women, names of elderly people and children, as well as the names of the train stations from where they set out on the way of ordeal. More than 35,000 people, taken out of their homes at midnight and under the threat of death, carried at a distance of thousands of kilometers. Many of them did not return from there. Their story tells, after decades, that the deportations were not a consumed fact, but a wound, which has not been healed as yet, as they destroyed our intellectual and economic elites, as well as any attempt of free thinking,’’ Maia Sandu said.   

The Moldovan president stressed that the consequences of these political persecutions were felt at present too. ‘’We are obliged to recognize the sacrifice of those people and take care for it not to be repeated. We condemn the discourse and actions of those who further deny, as those who deny Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and its victims act in the same way. A European Moldova, a prosperous rule of law state, a country where the human freedoms represent a supreme value – this is what we must do for the country from which the deportees were deprived,’’ Maia Sandu said.   

The 73rd anniversary of the second wave of Stalinist deportations from 1949 is marked today. Known with the name Yug (South), the operation from 5-6 July 1949 represents the biggest wave of deportations.