Saturday, 13 May 2000

"For Fatherland and Freedom"  Latvian (Mostly) Links
  News
  Picture Album

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)

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.

Silvija Peters


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.

  Latvian (Mostly) Links

  News

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

  Picture Album

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?

Church on Citadeles Iela
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