Seven MPs, including Vladimir Voronin and Marina Tauber, will appear in court again after a request to summon them to appear in court was returned, according to the GENDERDOC-M Information Centre.

In 2022, the seven were sued by GENDERDOC-M after a “discriminatory flashmob” they staged at Parliament, according to the organisation. After nearly two years in which the lawsuit was first dismissed and then reversed, the case will be retried.

In June 2022, three days before the Pride march in Chisinau, deputies of the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM) and the since outlawed Shor party organised a flashmob at Parliament. They displayed several posters, which they hung from the windows of the legislature: “No to homosexual dictatorship”, “Moldova against Pride festival”, “No to discrimination against traditional values”, “Moldova is not Sodom”.

“Shortly afterwards, several GDM members on their own behalf, but also on behalf of associations, sued the MPs. They demanded the collection of material and moral damage caused by instigating discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, based on the law on ensuring equality,” notes the GENDERDOC-M Information Center.

The entire list of elected representatives of the people consisted of Vladimir Voronin, Marina Tauber, Diana Caraman, Valeriu Muduc, Veaceslav Nigai, Inga Sibova and Nicolai Rusol.
The Chisinau Court, Centre Court, has removed the case from the case file. The judges of the first instance considered that the application for a writ of summons was filed by GDM with procedural violations. This is despite the fact that a claim on grounds of discrimination does not require a prior legal procedure, according to the organisation.

“Although this did not mean a win for the MPs, Diana Caraman, for example, used this file in her election campaign for mayor of the capital. On 24 October during the election debates on ProTV, Caraman said: ‘We won the case against GENDERDOC today (…) And we will not allow LGBT propaganda in schools, it’s a principled position’.”

Despite the first court’s decision, the GDM Centre appealed to the Court of Appeal. A few days ago, the second court allowed the case to be retried and found that the Chisinau court had issued its decision with “procedural flaws”, the source added.