In April 2009, about 15,000 people went to the streets of Chisinau, Republic of Moldova. The protests started with a flashmob on April the 6th, and grew bigger the next day on April the 7th. International media called it the “Twitter Revolution” and communist rulers called it a “Romanian provocation”. The demonstrators themselves claimed that elections were rigged and demanded the resignation of the communist government or the recount of votes. Events soon escalated out of control.

Here are the uncut 16 hours of a revolution. This is the CCTV footage from 7th of April and the night that followed, recorded by government surveillance cameras located on the buildings of the Government, the Parliament and the Presidency in downtown Chisinau. These are the relevant hours captured in 300 clips recorded by 13 surveillance cameras starting on April the 7 at 10 am and ending at 2 am next morning. Moldovan authorities never released these videos.

CRJI offers a publishing platform for a project coordinated by Vitalie Calugareanu from Chisinau. The technical support to decode and post the videos was offered by MIT Center for Future Civic Media. During the following days we will publish here a series of articles that investigate the abuses during April 2009 riots. We ask you to use this tool, investigate the videos and add relevant information related to them. The research was financed by SCOOP.