GallerySaturday, 24 June 2000
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Subj: Latvian mailer and AOL chat
reminder for Sunday, June 25th
Date:
6/24/00
File: D:\_WWWLA~1.COM\AUG93\PICTS\USMAS-~1.JPG (98321 bytes)
DL Time (TCP/IP): < 1 minute
Sveiki, all!
We wish you a summer day (or winter day, down
under) as bright and pleasant as ours here in New York today. If you're
wondering what it looks like in Riga, we have a couple of links
for you to find out, up to the minute! And we hope you fathers out there
had a fine Father's Day last Sunday!
In the news,
- Latvians mark the 60th anniversary of the Soviet takeover
- Latvia plans WW2 charges against Kalejs
- Abandoned Ship Crews
- Lithuanian parliament slams Russia's NATO stand
- Ranking of World's Health Systems (Latvia in the bottom half of the world's countries)
- Gorbachev says Putin no dictator
- Tearful Veterans Recall Nazi Invasion of Russia
This week's picture is another related to Usma, this time, of
Usma's baznica. A number of people reported not
receiving last week's picture (Usma's ezers) completely. You can go to our web site,
latvians.com, and read the archived mailer
and picture (use the top bar to navigate to the mailer index, then click on the
picture link in the index page).
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.
Ar visu labu,
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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If you really want to know what it looks like in Riga right now, there's only one option — a web camera! Following are three web-cam links for Riga. Our thanks to those who passed some of these on to us.
A view of Riga's Daugava waterfront from the Pardaugava ("Over the Daugava") area —
http://www.noass.lv
A view down a side street in Vecriga —
http://www.paritate.lv/webcam/webkamera.htm
A view (snapshots every 5 minutes during work hours) inside the Internet Cafe —
http://www.binet.lv/cafe/ ...then click on the pointer to the web cam page
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Latvians mark 60th anniversary
of Soviet takeover
Copyright 2000 The
Associated Press
By STEVEN C. JOHNSON, Associated Press
Writer
RIGA, Latvia, June 17
(AP) — A solemn procession of about 500 mostly gray-haired Latvians
walked through downtown Riga on Saturday, the 60th aniversary of the day their
country was invaded by the Soviet Union, to pay tribute to those who suffered
under the reign of dictator Joseph Stalin.
"Soviet
occupation brought deportations, wars and repression. We lost one-third of our
country. It's important for the world to recognize how many people suffered
from these crimes," said lawmaker Juris Dobelis.
The
ceremony concluded with a flower-laying ceremony at the Freedom Monument, a
towering obelisk that commemorates Latvian
independence.
On June 17, 1940, the Red Army overran
Latvia, which lies between eastern Russia and the Baltic Sea, claiming the
government had asked for Soviet protection. Within days, the same fate befell
the neighboring small states of Estonia and
Lithuania.
The attempted annexation was followed by
mass arrests of politicians and intellectuals. Thousands were deported to
Siberia, where many died.
Nazi Germany then invaded
from the west. During its 1941-44 occupation, nearly 80,000 Latvian Jews were
killed. At the end of World War II, the Red Army returned and remained until
1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart and Latvia regained
independence.
Relations between Latvia and Russia
remain chilly.
Moscow considers the Baltic states'
desire to join NATO a threat to Russian security. President Vladimir Putin
warned earlier this week that such a move would destabilize eastern
Europe.
Latvia and Russia also have squared off over
Latvia's conviction or indictment of nearly a dozen ex-Soviet officials, mostly
for taking part in mass deportations of
civilians.
Latvians say Russia must own up to its
past if relations are to improve.
"Things will only
get better if Russia admits it occupied Latvia and apologizes for its crimes,"
said Liga Krievina, 21.
Latvia plans
WW2 charges against Kalejs
Copyright
2000 Reuters Ltd.
RIGA, June 17
(Reuters) — Latvian prosecutors are preparing genocide and war crimes
charges against Nazi-era suspect Konrads Kalejs and will soon ask Australia to
extradite him to the Baltic state, BNS news agency reported on
Saturday.
Chief prosecutor Rudite Abolina told BNS
charges against the 86-year-old Australian citizen, who lives in Melbourne,
could be drafted by June or July.
The agency did not
quote Abolina directly, except in saying that it was crucial to secure Kalejs'
extradition, otherwise "there is nobody to press the charges
against."
Latvia expects to sign an extradition
treaty with Australia in June but BNS said extradition could take place without
a treaty.
The agency said that in war crime cases
countries normally extradited suspects against whom charges had been brought,
regardless of whether an extradition treaty existed with the requesting
country.
It quoted Abolina as saying charges would
be pressed against Kalejs once the evidence was prepared, without regard to
progress on an extradition agreement.
Nazi hunters
say Kalejs helped in the World War Two slaughter of Jews, although a lack of
evidence so far has been the obstacle to bringing him to
trial.
Latvian prosecutors re-opened investigations
into Kalejs' wartime past late last year when the discovery that he was living
in a retired peoples' home in Britain led to a media outcry and charges that
the Baltic state was soft on war criminals.
Abolina
said a recent visit by war crimes investigators from the United States played a
crucial role in Latvia's decision to
prosecute.
Kalejs, who vehemently denies involvement
in war crimes or genocide, fled to Australia in February to avoid a deportation
order by Britain.
He had already been deported from
the United States and Canada over his wartime
past.
He has said that while he was a member of a
Nazi-backed Latvian hit squad called the Arajs during World War Two, he only
fought Russia on the eastern front or was studying at university when killings
of Jews took place in 1941.
Ninety-five percent of
Latvia's 70,000 pre-war Jewish population was murdered during the German
occupation, sometimes with local collaboration.
Abandoned Ship Crews
Copyright 2000 The Associated Press
By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated
Press Writer
BREST, France, June
18 (AP) — The white-haired mariner's arms paint his story in a
language of sign. First sleep, then waves slam his ship back and forth. A leak
has sprung and the water is rising, to his chest, then his neck. The Russian
sailor mimics being towed — saved.
He caps his
story with the sign of the cross and a wide grin.
On
April 3, his ship, the Victor, an American-owned but Latvian-registered cargo
vessel, sprang a leak in the Atlantic 50 miles offshore from northwestern
France.
Thirty-three years old, the
blue-turned-rust-colored ship was carrying 3,000 tons of wheat. Thrown into
darkness by an electrical failure and taking on water, it drifted for 12 hours
until help arrived.
The ship and its crew — 15
Russians, Ukrainians, Latvians and Lithuanians — have been sitting at the
port of Brest in western Brittany ever since.
Its
owner, Seacastle International in Wilmington, Del., has abandoned the ship,
divesting itself of any debt and responsibility — including paying the
crew. Executives at Seacastle International could not be reached for
comment.
The crew's problem is hardly singular. A
study by the International Transport Workers Federation estimates more than
3,500 seafarers were abandoned by ship owners between 1995 and
1998.
"This is a problem mostly due to politics,"
said Roger Kohn at the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations
agency. "There's been a lot of changes in eastern Europe and companies that
were once viable seem to be having problems."
The
government where a ship is registered, in this case Latvia, is responsible for
the crew, Kohn said.
James Smith, a representative
for the transport workers federation, said there have been at least 24 cases of
crew abandonment in France since 1997.
"We believe
that crew abandonment is a violation of human rights, and we believe it should
be recognized as such," said Smith, who traveled from Paris recently to support
the Victor's crew.
He noted another case in Burgas,
Bulgaria, where a crew from the African nation of Ghana has been sitting in
port since 1998 without the right to leave their
ship.
"The idea here is to show that legislation at
present is just not adequate to cover the risk of crew abandonment," Smith
said.
With no pay since Jan. 1, the crewmen can't
afford the $15,000 needed to fix the engine, and they survive only on the
generosity of locals in this seafaring city.
On a
recent balmy Saturday, more than 2,500 residents of Brest turned up to tour the
Victor and express solidarity for the sailors. They provided $1,200 in aid by
"buying" small packets of wheat.
"The people are
very generous," said Yvan Saout, a volunteer in the aid effort. "The support is
unconditional."
In October, the International
Maritime Organization and the International Labor Organization, another U.N.
group, met in London to study the problem of abandoned ship crews. They
concluded international rules are inadequate for protecting
sailors.
The French government has said it will use
its turn at the European Union's rotating presidency in July to push for
tighter controls.
Even if France pushes through new
regulations for the EU countries, they will have little international impact,
Kohn said.
"Flag of convenience" rules currently
allow ship owners in any nation to register their ships in countries like
Panama and Malta to avoid strict regulations on the conditions of vessels and
their crews.
As the Brest residents shuffled up and
down Victor's steep and skinny stairwells, the crewmen radiated a general
giddiness from having visitors.
"I think the people
who come today are very good, very important for my crew, for me," Capt.
Vladimiras Kostyria said, proudly giving tours in halting English. "My life is
better because of this."
Selling the wheat or the
ship itself may be the only way the crew gets paid, but Kostyria holds out hope
for a happy ending.
"First it's necessary to pay my
team," he said. "Then I have to unload my wheat."
On the Net:
International Committee on Seafarer's Welfare: http://www.seafarerswelfare.org
Lithuanian parliament slams
Russia's NATO stand
Copyright 2000
Reuters Ltd.
VILNIUS, June 20
(Reuters) — Lithuania's parliament slammed Russia on Tuesday for
trying to stop Baltic nations from joining NATO, a development that Russian
leaders recently said could endanger international
stability.
"Declarations that Russia can ban
neighbouring sovereign states from something start to look like territorial
claims to the democratic world or the European Union," parliament said in a
resolution.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned
last week that the ambitions of former Soviet Baltic states Lithuania, Latvia
and Estonia to join NATO would, if realised, bring the Atlantic alliance to the
Russian border. If a country such as Russia felt threatened, it would
destabilise Europe "and the whole world."
"The
attempts of Moscow to draw a dividing line between Lithuania and Poland would
be really destabilising," the Lithuanian parliament's declaration
said.
Former Warsaw Pact states Poland, Hungary and
the Czech Republic joined NATO last year, and the Baltic states, hope they will
be brought into the alliance at its summit in
2002.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which regained
independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991, see NATO membership as
the best way to guarantee their hard-won independence after 50 years of Soviet
and German occupation.
"Lithuania will not give up
one of its basic foreign policy goals just because someone threatens us or
objects to such a move," Parliament Speaker Vytautas Landsbergis, a hero of the
independence struggle against Moscow, told parliament.
Ranking of World's Health
Systems
Copyright 2000 The Associated
Press
By The Associated Press, June
20
The World Health Organization's
ranking of the world's health systems.
Rank. Country
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Gorbachev says Putin no
dictator
Copyright 2000 Reuters
Ltd.
MOSCOW, June 21
(Reuters) — Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said on
Wednesday Russian President Vladimir Putin posed no danger to democracy in
Russia and it was ``foolish'' to accuse the former KGB spy of having a
dictatorial bent.
The arrest last week of media
baron Vladimir Gusinsky, who owns the only nationwide independent media group,
caused uproar among liberal politicians and commentators, some of whom accused
Putin of endangering free speech.
``Vladimir Putin
wants to do something for Russia. I don't think that he, as a man of the new
generation, will go down the road of dictatorship,'' Gorbachev was quoted as
saying by Itar-Tass news agency.
``(Accusing Putin
of dictatorial tendencies) is foolish and is expressly done to undermine the
president,'' Gorbachev said. ``I can't suspect him of having any intention of
squeezing democracy.''
Gorbachev said last week the
jailing of Gusinsky, who has since been released from custody but charged with
embezzlement, was a plot by vested interest ``clans'' in the Kremlin seeking to
undermine the work of a reforming president.
Gorbachev, 69, is feted in the West for his role in
bringing about the end of the Cold War but is viewed with more ambivalence at
home where a decade of turbulent post-Soviet reforms have left many nostalgic
for past certainties.
He has signalled a return to
politics by founding a Social Democratic Party which he says will engender
liberal reforming policies and ``the best of the past.''
Tearful Veterans Recall Nazi
Invasion of Russia
Copyright 2000 Reuters
Ltd.
MOSCOW, June 22
(Reuters) — Dozens of veterans wiped their tears away on Thursday as
they remembered when Nazi soldiers invaded Russia 59 years ago, going on to
practically destroy many Russian towns and cities and killing
millions.
The veterans looked on as soldiers lowered
red coffins containing the remains of some of those killed in the bloodiest
battle of World War Two and relived the day when the Nazis entered their city,
then known as Stalingrad.
"We were at school. We
were happy and everything was all right. On the road I met a girl who said the
war had started. I told her she was mad. 'What kind of war, where has it come
from?"' Galina Andropova told ORT state
television.
Lyubov Usachyova, who fought at the
front when she turned 16, said as soon as the Germans had reached the farthest
reaches of the city, now called Volgograd, she was ready to
fight.
"I took an iron and ran to the street. I
thought the Germans were there and I wanted to hit one of them with my iron,"
she said.
In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir
Putin laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier, joining the solemn
commemoration of the start of the war with Russia on June 22,
1941.
More than 20 million Soviet citizens are
believed to have been killed in the war, which generated countless stories of
heroism and survival of the Nazi sweep across Soviet
territory.
Among them was the battle of Stalingrad,
scene of the decisive battle that crippled the invading German army in the
winter of 1942-43.
Nearly two million died in the
fighting, now marked by a huge statue in the Volgograd of Mother Russia bearing
a sword.
The war still arouses passions across
Russia's huge landmass.
Moscow reacted angrily to
the conviction in Latvia earlier this year of a partisan who fought on the
Soviet side and was charged with killing
civilians.
"I am crying because I lived through
everything which happened," one old man said on television, wiping his tears
away.
"I know how it was
then."
Young soldiers lowered into the ground the
scarlet coffins, which ORT said contained the remains of 20 corpses. Russians
then passed by the graves throwing soil on them and laying red carnations by
their side.
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We're not sure, but our guess is this incarnation of Usmas baznica (church) was built to replace the one transported to Brivdabas Muzejs (the Open Air Ethnographic Museum on the edge of Riga). It's also where Peters' mother was married in more innocent times.
