Saturday, 13 May 2000
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Latvian Mailer and AOL Chat Reminder for Sunday, May 14th,
2000 File:
D:\+www.latvians.com\JUL95\Picts\Citadeles-iela-7711-06.jpg (43894 bytes)
DL
Time (32000 bps): < 1 minute
Summer is well on its way! We're still moving out/moving in, but we're
also looking forward to this summer's activities, most notably the Latvian
Song/Folk Dance Festival (Dziesmu Svetki) in Toronto. Latvians won't be the
only ones having a good time in Toronto — we found out the Lithuanians are
having their folk dance festival in Toronto at the same time!
Sadly,
last year's champs, the Czechs, ousted Latvia in the quarter-finals of the
world ice-hockey championships. (The U.S. was eliminated as well.) One thing is
for sure, Latvia's victory over Russia cemented Arturs Irbe's celebrity status
and probably gained ice hockey some new fans, as well.
This week's
links mirror current events:
- Lithuanian-American Folk Dance Festival
- One fan's tribute page to Arturs Irbe (trading cards going back to 1989!)
- One historian's analysis of "Russia and the Baltic States in the Age of NATO Enlargement" (also see news story on Berzins' comments on EU and NATO)
- Landesbergis introduces legislation calling for Moscow to compensate Lithuania for 50 years of repression and environmental damage
- Latvian authorities commemorate end of WW II
- Danish firms reportedly offer tours including teen-age sex in Latvia
- Russians to yet again play their violin about human rights abuses in Estonia and Latvia (their consistent response in the face of censure and suspension from Counil of Europe over Chechnya)
- Berzins hopes for Latvian NATO membership by 2003
- Latvian legislature turns down "special privileges" for anti-fascist fighters (read WWII Soviet army retired in Latvia)
- Russia Human Rights commisioner to visit Latvia
church in Riga — can you help us identify it?
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.
IN ACCORDANCE WITH AOL'S MAIL POLICY and good manners, please let Silvija (Silvija) know if you wish to be deleted from our mailing list. Past mailers are archived at latvians.com. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome.
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- 11th Lithuanian Folk Dance Festival
http://lithuanian-american.org/ssvente/Default.htm - Virtual Arturs Irbe Hockey Card Collection
http://www.geocities.com/game_on2000/irbecards/irbewelcome.html - RUSSIA AND THE BALTIC STATES IN THE AGE OF NATO ENLARGEMENT
http://wwics.si.edu/PROGRAMS/REGION/ees/occasional/blank3.html
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Lithuanian Lawmaker Demands Compensation For Soviet Rule
VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP)
— Parliament Speaker Vytautas Landsbergis has drafted legislation calling
on Moscow to compensate Lithuania for five decades of occupation by the Soviet
Union, his office said Monday.
The draft law
would oblige the government to seek money from Russia for repressions and for
environmental damage caused during the 1940-91 Soviet rule. It says a
commission should be set up to decide on an exact sum to
request.
Landsbergis, chairman of the ruling
Conservatives and a former president, has broached the issue before. A national
referendum passed in 1992 also called on Russia to make restitution
payments.
Parliament is expected to vote on
the first draft in the next few weeks, and it would then go through several
more readings. If approved by parliament, the bill would have to be signed into
law by President Valdas Adamkus.
Russia has
scoffed in the past at the idea, saying it is not responsible for the actions
of the Soviet Union. The Kremlin also has not acknowledged that the 1940s
takeover of the Baltics was illegal, as claimed by neighbors Lithuania, Estonia
and Latvia.
Russian officials were not
immediately available for comment on Monday's
announcement.
The Red Army occupied the
then-independent Baltic states in 1940. The Soviets retook them after a 1941-44
Nazi occupation. The Baltics only regained independence after the 1991 collapse
of the Soviet Union.
In the 1940s, Stalinist
forces arrested and deported hundreds of thousands of Balts. The Soviets also
established thousands of army bases, which Lithuanians say caused billions of
dollars in environmental damage.
The draft
law, which will go to the floor of parliament for a vote sometime in the next
few weeks, says Lithuania's government should also ask Russia to pay into a
special fund that would assist Lithuanians who were exiled during Soviet rule
to Siberia, but who now can't afford the costs of returning to their
homeland.
The proposal by Landsbergis comes at
an awkward time in Lithuanian-Russian relations — just a month before
Adamkus is slated to leave on a rare state visit to
Russia.
Since the Soviet collapse,
Baltic-Russian relations have occasionally been tense, with disagreement over
moves by all three Baltic neighbors to join NATO and to prosecute Soviet-era
war crimes suspects.
© 2000 Dow Jones
& Co., Inc.
Latvia remembers WWII victims, marks victory over Nazis
RIGA, May 8
(Itar-Tass) — Latvian authorities marked the defeat of the Nazi in
World War II and commemorated its victims on Monday by laying flowers at the
Liberty Monument and the tombs of Red Army soldiers, German prisoners of war
and at the Jewish cemetery.
President Vaira
Vike-Freiberga, who left on a working visit to the United States and Canada,
noted the "historic contribution by the Allied forces — the U.S., the
former Soviet Union, France and Great Britain — to the defeat of the
Nazi".
WWII veterans are also preparing for
the Victory Day holiday celebrated on May 9. They will mourn over 157,000
soldiers and militiamen who gave their lives for
Latvia.
© 1996-2000 ITAR-TASS
Latvia shocked by reports on Danish pedophiliac tours
RIGA, May 9
(Itar-Tass) — Latvia has been shocked by a report that some tourist
companies of Denmark offer tours to Riga for fans of sex with
teenagers.
"It is dreadful," chief of the
"Rescue Children" public organization Inguna Ebele said on Tuesday. She knew
plenty of examples of the adamant protection of children's rights in countries
on the other coast of the Baltic Sea and could not imagine pedophiliac tourists
to come to Latvia, Poland, Russia and other countries of East Europe from
there.
The police of Latvia has taken up the
case. A public center in Riga, which studies social problems of prostitution,
thinks that such tours can exist. According to the center, every fourth hooker
in Riga is less than 18 years old. Younger prostitutes are kept away from the
public eye. The prostitutes have told the center that they have many foreign
clients.
© 1996-2000
ITAR-TASS
Russia to raise [alleged] human rights problem in Baltics with Council of Europe
MOSCOW,
May 10 (Itar-Tass) — Russia's acting Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on
Wednesday leaves for Strasbourg, France, where the Committee of Ministers of
the Council of Europe will meet in session.
It is the committee that will decide whether the Russian Federation will be
suspended from membership in the Council of Europe or not. The committee may
either approve the resolutions recently passed by the Parliamentary Assembly of
the Council of Europe, or not. The resolutions had recommended that a procedure
be launched to suspend Russia's membership in that international
organization.
A high-ranking source at the
Russian foreign ministry on Wednesday told Tass that the coming session was
expected not only "to discuss PACE recommendations on the situation in Chechnya
but a Stability Pact for the South-Eastern Europe as
well."
The source went on saying that the
Russian side would "call the attention of the participants in the session to
the unsatisfactory situation with the Kosovo settlement and to a grave human
rights situation in Latvia and Estonia."
The
Russian foreign minister will hold a number of bilateral meetings in the
framework of the session. He is expected to meet with Secretary General of the
Council of Europe and with the foreign ministers of Romania and Croatia as
well.
In April, Ivanov met in Luxembourg with
his Irish counterpart Brian Cohen, who is now heading the Committee of
Ministers of the Council of Europe. The meeting resulted in an agreement about
that the sides would keep in close touch while preparing the Chechen issue for
the discussion at the committee's session.
The
foreign ministers will start their work with an informal meeting organized by
Secretary General of the Council of Europe Valter Schwimmer. The members of the
committee are expected to start discussing the Chechnya-related resolutions of
the PACE at that very meeting. The issue will be further discussed during the
official part of the session on May 11, which is to result in a press
conference.
With the end of the session,
Ireland will hand over its authority of CE Chairman to Italy in conformity with
the rotation procedure.
©
1996-2000 ITAR-TASS
Latvian PM aims EU and NATO sights at 2003
© 2000 Reuters
Ltd.By Burton
Frierson
RIGA, May 11
(Reuters) — Latvia's new prime minister, Andris Berzins, said on
Thursday that he hoped to secure NATO membership by 2003, the year the country
wants to be ready to join the European
Union.
He also said he hoped relations with
neighbouring Russia would improve enough to finally settle a border agreement,
an issue outstanding since Latvia left the Soviet Union in
1991.
"We need the political will from both
(the Russian and Latvian) sides to do it. From our side, we are ready," Berzins
told foreign journalists.
The border deal has
been held up by disagreement over the status of Latvia's Russian-speaking
minority, which accounts for one-third of the Baltic country's 2.4 million
people.
Latvia refused to grant blanket
citizenship to Russian speakers when it regained independence from Moscow and
until 1998 placed limits on those who could apply to
naturalise.
Those restrictions have been
lifted, and applications are pouring in at a rate of about 1,500 per month,
Berzins said.
The Organisation for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has praised Latvia since 1998 for minority
integration.
But relations with Russia have
been tense recently over a Riga court's 1999 conviction of a former communist
guerrilla for war crimes over his role in killing nine civilians in
1944.
Russia considers the former partisan a
hero of the Soviet Union's battle against Adolf Hitler's Germany and accuses
Latvia of sponsoring a revival of
Nazism.
Latvia, which was occupied by Nazis
and Soviets, believes those suspected of atrocities should be prosecuted
regardless of ideology. "For the development of a normal democracy, it's
important that we leave no crimes unpunished," Berzins
said.
Tension in Russian relations has been a
main reason for Latvia's bid to join NATO, which the country sees as the best
guarantee for its hard-won independence. Russia says bringing NATO, its former
Cold War foe, to its border is provocative and would heighten security
fears.
Latvia also sees the EU as a form of
soft security and a means of cementing economic ties to the
West.
"NATO is a bit more complicated
question. It's not so clear now but we believe that this timing will be
approximately the same with our membership in the European Union," Berzins
said, adding that Latvia's goal remains to be ready for EU membership by
2003.
Berzins said Latvia would increase
defence spending to two percent of the budget by 2002 to aid the NATO
bid.
The country will target corruption,
increase administrative capacity and reform agriculture to meet requirements
for EU membership, he said.
Anti-fascists refused privileges in Latvia
RIGA, May 11 (Itar-Tass) — The
Latvian parliament voted again on Thursday against the draft law on social
privileges to anti-fascist fighters. This is the fourth time that this draft,
tabled by parliament members from the left-wing bloc, was turned
down.
Parliament member Yuris Dobelis of the
ruling Fatherland's Freedom Party believes that "servicemen of the Soviet Army
deserve no privileges". Dobelis outlined his "original" view on the history of
the past war right from the parliament rostrum. He claimed that "the Soviet
Union began the Second World War as an
occupationist...".
In turn, parliament member
from the left-wing bloc Alexander Golubov rejected this view and pointed out
that a legal status was enacted not only in the countries of the anti-hitlerite
coalition, but also in Germany, for all the citizens who had fought against
fascism. "We move to make life for such people easier in Latvia," he
stated.
The draft was put to a vote after the
two speeches. It was backed by sixteen mps. Twenty-three mps voted against it
and 46 abstained.
© 1996-2000 ITAR-TASS
Russian Human Rights Commissioner plans to visit Latvia
MOSCOW, May 12 (Itar-Tass) —
Russian Human Rights Commissioner Oleg Mironov plans to visit Latvia for having
first-hand comprehensive information about human rights of Latvian
Russians.
On Friday Mironov and Latvian
ambassador to Russia Imant Daudis discussed further cooperation in the
protection of human rights, the Commissioner's press service has told
Itar-Tass. It is desirable to make the trip to Latvia, because the numerous
appeals to Oleg Mironov "bear the emotional elements of despair and
uncertainty" and he does not have objective information about problems of our
citizens, the press service noted.
When in
Latvia, Mironov plans to meet the local authorities, public organizations and
nationals of Russia. He has agreed on cooperation with the Latvian State Bureau
for Human Rights, the press service
said.
© 1996-2000 ITAR-TASS
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This church is in Riga along Citadeles Iela, north of Krisjana Valdemara Iela. Unfortunately, it's not listed in the guide books, and Peters doesn't remember any signs. Do you know what it is or used to be?