News
Picture Album

Sveiki, all!

Tomorrow marks a solemn observation, that of commemorating the thousands whom the Soviets deported on June 14th, 1941. While the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews is universally condemned, there are those who still deny Stalin's butchery, or worse, admit to it but then go on to compare genocides as if it were some contest about which was the greater atrocity.

We will remember our loved ones who perished, and insure the story of those who survived is not lost. Germany has come to grips with its past (often under intense unrelenting international scrutiny) -- we cannot rest until that same scrutiny is applied to Russia in acknowledging its Soviet past.

In the news:

We're trying to get back to mid-week publication -- we will return with a new link next week.

This week's picture commemorates those who died fighting for a free Latvia, it's a picture of the sculpture in Bralu Kapi.

As always, AOL'ers, Remember, mailer or not, Lat Chat spontaneously appears every Sunday on AOL starting around 9:00/9:30pm Eastern time, lasting until 11:00/11:30pm. AOL'ers can follow this link: Town Square - Latvian chat. And thanks to you participating on the Latvian message board as well: LATVIA (both on AOL only).

Ar visu labu,

Silvija Peters

  News


Baltics say they're not panicking over Irish no-vote
AP WorldStream
Monday, June 11, 2001 12:07:00 PM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
By STEVEN C. JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer

    RIGA, Latvia (AP) -- Officials in the Baltic countries said Monday they don't expect their bids to join the European Union to be seriously delayed by Ireland's rejection of an EU treaty that was seen as key to the process.
    "There's no panic here," said Toivo Klaar, foreign affairs adviser to the president of Estonia, the smallest of the three former Soviet republics. "Nothing changes for us. We go at negotiations with the EU in the same way we have been."
    Klaar and other Baltic officials said that they were hopeful that Ireland, as well as the other 14 current EU members, would eventually ratify the Treaty of Nice. All EU members must ratify it before it can take effect.
    Critics in Ireland said the treaty would force Ireland to surrender EU funds and threaten Irish neutrality by requiring that its troops take part in NATO-led peacekeeping operations. The Irish government strongly backed the treaty.
    Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania made joining the EU a top priority after regaining independence following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
    Klaar said the Irish no-vote in a referendum last Thursday illustrated that average citizens across Europe had trouble assessing complex EU treaties.
    "Ireland showed that people just have a hard time understanding the EU," he said.
    Atis Sjantis, foreign affairs adviser to Latvia's prime minister, said the referendum demonstrated that leaders of existing EU states needed to better explain the benefits of expansion.
    "Our job (the job of EU candidates) is to complete our homework. It's for the EU to explain expansion and its benefits," he said. "As the debate goes on, I think people will see we're not a threat. Support for expansion will grow."
    As results from Ireland came in last week, Estonian Foreign Minister Toomas Ilves chose to look on the bright side, saying that, whatever the outcome, "it would show small countries have some say in the EU and cannot be overlooked."
    EU skeptics in all three Baltic nations, which have a combined population of just over 7 million, have said they would have no voice in the powerful bloc.

NATO expansion an issue for Bush's visit to alliance's headquarters
AP WorldStream
Monday, June 11, 2001 8:42:00 PM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
By JEFFREY ULBRICH
Associated Press Writer

    BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- There's a certain irony in the fact that the Cold War is over but NATO is getting bigger.
    The Russians have noticed that too. And they don't like it one bit.
    Two years ago, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization celebrated its 50th birthday at a Washington summit by welcoming three new members -- Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary -- all former enemies as nations of the communist Warsaw Pact. That pushed NATO membership to 19. At the next summit in the Czech Republic next year, more new members are expected to be announced.
    NATO expansion is on U.S. President George W. Bush's agenda Wednesday when he meets with the alliance's chiefs of state and government at NATO headquarters. He is expected to kick off what will be a long, intense debate over who will be next to join Europe's most prestigious security club, and when.
    Waiting anxiously in the wings are nine former communist nations -- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania.
    NATO officials say they have noticed a lessening in the intensity of Moscow's opposition to the expansion. Secretary-General Lord Robertson is always at pains to point out Russia's cooperation with the allies in the Balkans. And Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov even acknowledged last month that Moscow has no veto over the alliance's enlargement plans.
    However, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov's comments to Russian reporters here Friday seem to have blown out of the water any theory that Russia accepts NATO's expansion as inevitable.
    "The Western opinion that recent progress in Russia-NATO military cooperation can be regarded as a liberalized Russian attitude to enlargement of the alliance is a big political confusion," the Itar-Tass news agency quoted the defense minister as saying. "The strengthening of the alliance's military might is a direct threat to European security."
    Still, the reality is that NATO fully intends to take in more members, whether the Russians like it or not.
    Beyond Russia's concerns, the first expansion showed making NATO bigger also carries heavy baggage of its own.
    Everyone acknowledges that bringing in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic was mainly a political statement. What was important was that the alliance accept at least some former communist enemies -- also in the face of Russian opposition.
    But now NATO military experts estimate it will take years to bring the troops of the three nations up to Western levels, which has raised the idea that the next aspirants should face a higher standard militarily.
    Each of the nine aspirants has been given an individually tailored Military Action Plan reviewing its readiness and pointing the way to improvement. Two such assessments have been done for each, and a final review in 2002 will form part of the basis for deciding who will be invited to join.
    What isn't known is how much weight the allies will give to purely military factors this time. The United States and Britain, among others, want military preparedness to have much more influence. Others, such as France, feel the decision must be, essentially, political.
    For the candidates, joining NATO means different things.
    One NATO military specialist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said only the three Baltic nations -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania -- want to join the alliance because of real security concerns. For the rest, being in NATO means joining the club of Europe's prosperous, being part of a major Western institution.
    How the next nations will be brought in remains a question. Some favor a "big bang" theory, accepting all nine at once. Other allies have their particular favorites. Some say all three Baltic countries should be invited at once, for security reasons and since they are essentially a unit. Others point to major differences in the military readiness and political and economic development among the three.
    Some allies say Slovenia, which missed by a whisker getting in the last time, should be rewarded now. Others say Romania, among the top candidates last time, has actually regressed. And almost everybody shudders at the mere thought of Macedonia.
    In addition, there are 19 parliaments that must be persuaded -- not the least of which is the U.S. Senate, where doubts about further enlargement abound.
    The big difference this time is that the philosophical debate over whether NATO should expand at all has been resolved. The door to the alliance has been opened. Nine nations are knocking. The only question is who and when.

Latvian president calls for clearer condemnation of deporations
AP WorldStream
Tuesday, June 12, 2001 11:46:00 AM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
By STEVEN C. JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer

    RIGA, Latvia (AP) -- President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said Tuesday that Stalinist-era deportations of Latvians to Siberia amounted to "genocide" and she urged Western historians to condemn them as strongly as they do Nazi crimes against Jews.
    "Latvians have long said deportations correspond to genocide," she told several hundred historians and academics attending a conference to mark the 60th anniversary of the first large-scale deportations. "One only had to be an honest Latvian citizen to face deportation."
    On June 14, 1941, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered that some 15,000 Latvians, including leading politicians and academics, be arrested and deported to Siberia, where many later died in the harsh conditions.
    Similar fates befell people in the neighboring Baltic states of Lithuania and Estonia after the then-independent Baltics were forcibly annexed by Moscow in 1940. They only regained independence following the 1991 Soviet collapse.
    Shortly after the 1941 deportations, the Nazi army invaded Latvia and massacred nearly 80,000 Jews over the next three years. The Red Army then returned and forcibly exiled tens of thousands more Latvians to Siberia.
    Some Jewish groups have criticized Latvia in the past for not honestly addressing the extent of atrocities committed against Jews during Nazi rule.
    But Vike-Freiberga said Tuesday that while few question Nazi culpability for the Holocaust, too many scholars gloss over Soviet crimes.
    "There are laws against Holocaust denial, yet there are those who justify the Stalinist repressions, who say they were needed to strengthen the socialist revolution," she said. "This attitude needs to be reassessed."
    She said Latvian Jews were among those devastated by Stalinist deportations.
    "One might say Soviet repression was anti-Latvian and anti-Semitic," she said.
    But some delegates argued against equating Soviet deportations with the Holocaust.
    "Latvia certainly should research Soviet crimes. Families were disrupted, people were sent to Siberia. It was a tragedy," said Steven Springfield, a Latvian Holocaust survivor from the United States attending the Riga conference. "But under no circumstances can they be compared to the atrocities of the Holocaust."
    Conference participants were mostly from the Baltic countries but also came from Russia, the United States and Israel.
    Historians say Stalin is responsible for killing at least 15 million people and deporting 40 million others during his reign.

Victims of Stalinist persecution demand Russia pay damages
AP WorldStream
Wednesday, June 13, 2001 2:55:00 PM
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press

    CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) -- Hundreds of survivors of Stalinist-era repression demanded Wednesday that Russia return assets confiscated 60 years ago when the former Soviet Union annexed Moldova.
    The demand came as survivors gathered to commemorate the anniversary of their deportation from Moldova to camps in Siberia and other desolate areas of the former Soviet Union.
    Ion Buga, who heads the National Romanian Party, called on Russia to take responsibility for the crimes, "as the formal successor of the Soviet Union."
    "Russia has to follow the example of Germany ... and pay damages to the victims and their successors," he said.
    Russia invaded Moldova, which was then part of Romania, on June 28, 1940 following a pact between Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.
    The Baltic states, including Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, were also invaded under the same deal. A year later, Stalin decided to crush dissent and force communism on the new territories using terror.
    During the night of June 12-13, 1941, more than 22,000 people were deported to Siberia and remote areas of the Soviet Union.
    Two other massive deportations took place in 1949 and 1951. The total number of Moldovans who were killed, imprisoned, or deported during that period is estimated at 885,000.
    The victims called on parliament to declare June 28, the day when the Soviet Union invaded Moldova, to be called a "day of commemorating victims of communism."
    Moldova gained independence in 1991 after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

  Picture Album

Latvian heros lie in sleep eternal, from Peters' trip in 1995.

Bralu Kapi - Fallen Heroes
latvians.com qualifies as a protected collection under Latvian Copyright Law Ch. II § 5 ¶ 1.2.
© 2024, S.A. & P.J. Vecrumba | Contact [at] latvians.com Terms of Use Privacy Policy Facebook ToS Peters on Twitter Silvija on Twitter Peters on Mastodon Hosted by Dynamic Resources