Protests in Moldova

First of all, for those who don't know, Moldova is an East European country located between Romania and Ukraine. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldova)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-moldova-riot8-2...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/world/europe/08moldova.html?hp
http://www.euronews.net/2009/04/08/moldova-in-turmoil-after-electio...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7987608.stm

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23pman

The story in brief:

On Sunday, April 5th, there were general elections in Moldova, and the Communist Party won over 50% of the votes, which would give them total control over the Parliament, and thus the possibility to choose the president on their own, and also to amend the constitution. This happened after in local elections the Communist Party won something like 35%, AND an exit poll commissioned BY THE COMMUNIST PARTY said that they would only win 44% of the votes. That has to be at least suspicious.

Because of that, on Monday there was a small protest, a few hundred people, against the alleged election fraud. The next day however a crowd of at least 10,000 protesters, mostly young people and students, gathered in front of the Parliament building in Chisinau. Peaceful at first, they turned violent, overran the security forces and ransacked and set fire to the Parliament. Hundreds were injured, and at least one was killed.

The current communist president, Vladimir Voronin, denounced the protests as an attempted coup d'etat.

I am amazed that the international press has been very slow to report the incidents, even while the Parliament building was burning.

As of this moment, mobile networks in Moldova are blocked, as are the websites of independent media, and the state controlled media don't report anything related to the protests. All border crossings between Romania and Moldova were closed until 10:30 GMT, when some of them opened. There are now at least 4000 protesters in Chisinau.