CHISINAU (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th December, 2020) Moldovan farmers holding a demonstration outside the parliament building in Chisinau clashed with police, as officers tried to prevent the protesters, who arrived on tractors, from using the vehicles, a Sputnik correspondent reported on Wednesday from the scene.
Last week, the farmers parked roughly 200 tractors outside the government building in the capital to press their demand for state aid after rural households suffered harvest loss due to harsh weather this year. Protesters intend to stay in the city center until the government fulfills their demand or resigns.
Sputnik correspondent said the farmers moved toward the parliament building on tractors after learning that lawmakers would gather on Wednesday, not the next day as planned, for a meeting to consider a project on fiscal policy. The parliament building is cordoned off by police officers, with traffic in Chisinau downtown being blocked. Tractor drivers are honking in a bid to draw the attention of the authorities to their problems.
Later in the day, Alexei Grosu, the deputy head of the National Inspectorate of Public Security, told Sputnik that police used tear gas against protesters who were using vehicles to ram the cordon and enter the parliament. In addition, farmers did not comply with sanitary rules amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Colonel Stefan Pavlov, the head of the General Inspectorate of Carabinieri, in turn, told reporters three police officers were injured as a result of the clashes outside the parliament building.
The situation deescalated only after lawmakers invited representatives of the protesters for negotiations.
Among other things, protesters are demanding that the authorities should not increase agricultural VAT from eight to 12 percent and allocate 3,000 lei ($174) for each 10,000 square meters of agricultural land that had suffered from the drought.
The farmers are allowed to hold demonstrations until the end of December.
Up to 80 percent of Moldova's territory was affected by drought this year. In November, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia transferred an equivalent of $3.6 million to Moldova's Finance Ministry to support the farmers whose crops were destroyed by the drought.
