Integration monitor is a daily Latvian press digest on ethnic minority and society integration issues. The Monitor reviews the biggest Latvian dailies: Diena, Latvijas Avize, Neatkariga (in Latvian language), Vesti Segodnya (in Russian language). In specific cases other information sources are used. Latvian Centre for Human Rights is not responsible for information published by the media.

• Year ago Bauska City Council did not permit building of a Jewish memorial in the town
• Vesti Segodnya prints an interview with a teacher of a Russian language school Vladislavs Rafalskis

Vesti Segodnya reports that a year ago, the Council of Jewish Associations in Latvia asked the permission of the Bauska City Council to build a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust in Bauska. However, the City Council refused to give the permission arguing that the draft project of the memorial does not fit the town’s architecture. The newspaper also notes that the most active deputy against the Jewish memorial was the same person who was the initiator of the establishment of a monument to the Latvian Waffen SS legionnaires in Bauska. As reported, the Latvian Union against Nazism calls to remove the monument from the town’s centre to the fraternal cemetery because the two of three police battalions mentioned on the monument were the Nazi punitive units and took part in the genocide crimes in Russia, Belorussia and Ukraine in 1942-1944.

Vesti Segodnya prints an interview with a teacher of a Russian language school Vladislavs Rafalskis who recently publicly stated his disloyalty towards Latvian state. Mr Rafalskis believes that disloyalty towards the exiting political regime emerged among especially Russian residents of Latvia in the beginning of 90’s when the society got divided into citizens and non-citizens. Mr Rafalskis also believes that about 80% of Latvian residents are not satisfied with the political regime but are afraid to express their opinion.