Integration monitor

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.

June 20, 2012

  • Chas prints an interview with political scientist, ex-advisor of the Minister of Culture on integration issues Andrejs Berdnikovs
  • Russian activists: Russians should tell ethnic Latvians about the problems they have
  • Saeima’s sub-Committee asked the Security Police to evaluate whether Aleksandrs Gilmans’ article about Stalinist deportations incites ethnic hatred and justifies crimes against humanity

Chas prints an interview with political scientist, ex-advisor of the Minister of Culture on integration issues Andrejs Berdnikovs. Mr Berdnikovs criticizes the program on consolidation of society elaborated during the time of the ex-Minister of Culture Sarmite Elerte.  Mr Berdnikovs believes that this program is not legitimate because it was elaborated without real engagement of representatives of ethnic minorities. According to Mr Berdnikovs, the action plan of the program is senseless and it is bad parody on propaganda and brainwashing - it is a plan how to explain that Latvia was occupied, what isare the constitutional basis of Latvia and so on. Mr Berdnikovs also supports the initiative on collection of signatures for the national referendum on granting non-citizens Latvian citizenship because this referendum is able to change the political situation in the country.

Vesti Segodnya prints an interview with one Russian activists Aleksandrs Gamalejevs. Mr Gamalejevs believes each Russian residents of Latvia should tell ethnic Latvians in a friendly and kind manner but systematically about the problems they have. Because, in majority of cases, ethnic Latvian are not aware of the issues Russian speakers face every day and how absurd those might be, believes Mr Gamalejevs. 

Yesterday, the Saeima’s Statist Education sub-Committee decided to ask the Security Police to evaluate whether an article about Stalinist deportations in Latvia in 1941 published on 15 June 2012 by politician Aleksandrs Gilmans. Mr.Gilmans himself is officially recognized as a victim of Stalinist repressions, because he was born in Siberia in 1953 to parents who were still in exile after deportation in 1941, and the article brings personal perspective of his family. The author of the initiative Raivis Dzintars asks if the statement of Mr.Gilmans “my family was deported by ethnic Latvians” violates Section 78 of the Criminal Law (incitement to ethnic, national and racial hatred), and if the statement that at reunions, returnees who spent their youth in the exile, had memories about the “jaunt in the open air, not exile” violates Section 74.1 of the Criminal Law (Denial of genocide, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace and justification of war crimes). Latvijas Avize, Vesti Segodnya

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