OSCE is reminded about violation of rights of Russian compatriots living in Baltic countries

Speaking at the OSCE conference on human rights held in Warsaw, Poland, representative of Russia's Ministry of Education and Science Ksenia Trinchenko claimed that the Baltic countries authorities violate the rights of Russian speaking people, including their right for getting education in their native language, reports RIA «Novosti». She urged the international community to take action in order to protect children’s interests according to the norms of international law and the OSCE commitments.

According to Mrs. Trinchenko, the matter of the access to education provided in the native language still remains urgent in all the OSCE states.

In particular, she expressed anxiety that the Riga authorities are going to provide school education to children in the state language eliminating the Russian language from the educational process. That is supposed to have been done by the academic year of 2018. The system of preschool education permanently comes under pressure from the authorities as well. The Russia’s representative noted that Latvian politicians are likely to insist on closing Russian kindergartens and establishing groups for Russian speaking children at Latvian preschool institutions instead.

Education reform is held in Lithuania as well. Russian and Polish schools keep on being closed and all the senior school students are to get their school education in the Lithuanian language.

The number of Russian schools and gymnasiums decreases in Estonia and at least 60% of teaching is provided in Estonian. According to Mrs. Trinchenko, that is not a result of the optimization of teaching and learning process but true discrimination.