rusojuz.lv
The ban on bilingual school education and discriminatory laws against the Russian language in Latvia is a step towards denying democracy and human rights, a letter from the Russian community of Latvia to the Council of Europe says.
The message addressed to Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland also calls for a request from the Venice Commission to amend the two Latvian language laws which were adopted by the Saeima this spring. According to the authors of the letter, this is necessary for Latvian society to return to the democratic values. The text of the message is published in the Latvian Russian Union's Facebook.
The letter informs the Secretary General of Europe that the laws on education that directly affect the rights of the national minorities of Latvia have been adopted without consulting the minorities and without considering their opinions. By the language reform, the authorities intend to reduce to 20% the proportions of teaching in the languages of national minorities. The authors of the message call the adopted laws politically motivated. The letter claims that a third of the Latvian population is Russian native speakers and Russian is studied in the country for more than one century.
To prove this thesis, the letter cites the history of Russian-language education in Latvia, which dates back to the end of the 17th century when the first Russian school appeared in Latvia. Over the years, their amount raised, with schools working in the years of the first independence in Latvia granted in 1918, and in the years of the Nazi occupation when there were more than 200 Russian schools in the country.
Russia helps Russian-speaking residents of Latvia to defend their rights. Russkiy Mir reported that in October, at the next session of UNESCO Russia's permanent representative, Alexander Kuznetsov, publicly pointed out the inappropriate actions of the authorities of Latvia and Ukraine which prohibit national minorities from studying in their native language.
Russkiy Mir
