60 CATAN AND OTHERS v. MOLDOVA AND RUSSIA JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINIONS 6. In the instant case one cannot disregard the repercussions, on both the private and the family lives of the applicants, of the intimidation and harassment to which the pupils and their parents were subjected. It is clear from the case file that the authorities in the “Moldavian Republic of Transdniestria” created a climate of intimidation such that it had a “chilling effect” on the pupils, not just when it came to, say, using textbooks written in Latin script but also, more broadly, when it came to using their language within and outside school. 7. On 29 July 2004, for instance, the Transdniestrian police stormed Evrica School in Rîbniţa and evicted the women and children who were inside it. Over the following days police and officials from the Rîbniţa Department of Education visited parents and threatened them with the loss of their jobs if they did not transfer their children to another school (see paragraph 48 of the judgment). In our view, these actions were disproportionate and amounted to threats against the families not just in school but also at home. 8. There was also a series of other incidents intended purely to harass, such as the cutting of water and electricity supplies to Alexandru cel Bun School in Tighina (see paragraph 55), the failure to protect Evrica School in Rîbniţa against a systematic campaign of vandalism (see paragraph 51) and the transfer of Ştefan cel Mare School (Grigoriopol) to a village about twenty kilometres away which was under Moldovan control and to which the children had to travel by bus, being subjected to daily bag searches and identity checks at the border, sometimes accompanied by insults. 9. With more specific reference to the issue of checks and searches, the Court’s judgment in Gillan and Quinton v. the United Kingdom (ECHR 2010) demonstrates very clearly, albeit in a different context, the dangers of arbitrariness in this sphere and the absolute necessity of putting safeguards in place (see §§ 85 and 86 of the judgment in question). 10. Hence, it seems clear to us that this atmosphere of intimidation affected the day-to-day lives of the families, who lived in a permanently hostile environment. 11. These are the reasons why we believe that there has been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention in the present case. 12. Furthermore, all these measures were applied systematically against the Moldovan population which uses the Latin alphabet; this leads us to the question of Article 14 of the Convention. Article 14 13. The applicants complained that they had been subjected to discrimination based on their language. More specifically, they maintained that the requirement to study in a language which they considered artificial caused them disadvantages in their private and family lives, and particularly