Our readers contact us daily. Unfortunately, we know more about their problems than about their joys. More often, we hear about serious problems, which seem  like they cannot be resolved. 

On August 20, I learned that Mrs. Ala is trying to set up a charity, but is facing dozens of bureaucratic problems and barriers. The same day, Mrs. Alexandra told us that she no longer knows what to do with her daughter-in-law. In Alexandra’s opinion, her daughter-in-law seems to care more about the house in which she raised her two sons, rather than having a good relationship with Alexandra’s son, who is still her child despite being sixty years old.

That same day, Timofei Dilan visited us to report angrily that Poșta Moldovei lost the application that he had sent on June 11, 2019, to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France. The man has evidence that the application has not reached its destination. Poșta Moldovei representatives shrug their shoulders on the issue. 

Timofei Dilan has not received an official response yet, but the electronic data, which we verified in the newsroom, shows that his letter disappeared on June 12 at 6.34 pm, before leaving Moldova. Poșta Moldovei has some explanations to give. Due to the fact that it did not send his application to the ECHR, the legal term in which Dilan could appeal to the European High Court was exceeded. Now, Timofei Dilan doesn’t know what he can do.  

Let Poșta Moldovei say if there were any orders given by current authorities that no request be sent to the ECHR from the Republic of Moldova. With or without orders, can Poșta Moldovei now do Dilan justice, instead of the ECHR? Can Poșta Moldovei compensate him for the moral and material damages incurred because of this institution? Mr Dilan is in a series of lawsuits, but he is still determined to start a new case, in order to find his letter, and to find out who has not allowed his application to reach Strasbourg.

Every day, the citizens confuse ZdG with official state institutions. We ask them why they come to us and why they don’t appeal to the Government, City Hall, the Court, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Anti-Corruption Council, the Police or Social Assistance. They say firmly that they have lost confidence, that they need time to regain it. 

This is exactly what Ala Ilașciuc, from the village of Aluniș in the Râșcani district, told us. She called us at the end of July, angry that since August 1, 2018, she’s been futilely trying to reunite her family, half left in Prizren, Kosovo. 

After years of absence, Ala decided to visit her parents and returned home along with her two children, 10 year-old Lidiana and 3 year-old Yusuf. Ala is a Moldovan citizen. Her son, Yusuf has a birth certificate issued in Kosovo, where he was born and his father is from. However the Moldovan state refused to issue any kind of documents for Yusuf, stating that Kosovo is not recognized as a state at the international level.

For one year, Ala has been demonstrating to a number of institutions that all her documents are certified by the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, [Moldova being a UN member state]. It wasn’t enough. The woman hired a lawyer, knocked on numberless doors, but it was in vain. For more than a year, her husband and older daughter lived in Kosovo, while she and Yusuf, a child deprived of documents and any rights in Moldova, stayed in Aluniș. 

In July, Ala called the newsroom. She told us that she could not bear being away from her family any longer. She told us that she spent thousands of euros on transportation fees, on translations and authentications of documents, on legal services, and that her call to the ZdG was her last hope. Then she sent us all the documents accumulated during the year from the Public Services Agency, from the Ministry of External Affairs and European Integration, from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and more.

She told us that she tried to leave for her home and family in Kosovo with the documents that Yusuf had, but they wouldn’t let her pass the border. We analyzed the dozens of letters that were full of revolt and the pain of separation from loved ones. We decided to send them, on behalf of ZdG, to the Government’s State Chancellery, where a young man named Andrei Spânu had just been appointed as Secretary General. He received Ala’s case and promised that, within a week, he would identify a solution for the reunification of the family. 

Andrei Spânu also spoke with Ala. He gave her his cell phone number and they agreed to communicate whenever needed. I spoke to Ala a few days ago. She was very happy. “We are leaving in a few days. The documents are ready. We have plane tickets. You can’t imagine how impatient my family is to meet us. I can’t believe that the problem that couldn’t be solved for a year was solved within a week,” Ala said. 

I can hardly remember a state official responding so receptively in the 15 years of ZdG’s existence.

Aneta Grosu, aneta@zdg.md