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.

• Latvijas Avize interviews head of the language control department of the State Language Centre Antons Kursitis
• Security Police will check statements made by a Latvia writer Antons Rancans on incitement to ethnic hated
• Diena reports about the government’s plans to transfer 80% of education content education in ethnic minority schools into Latvian language

Latvijas Avize interviews head of the language control department of the State Language Centre Antons Kursitis who also stands for the Parliamentary elections from the list of the nationalists’ union All for Latvia!/FF-LNIM. If Mr Kursitis is elected to the Saeima he would persuade other MPs that Latvian government should be decentralised relocating ministries from Riga to other Latvian regions. Otherwise, Latvia can return to those days when the majority of employees in state institutions are Russian speakers as there are 60% of Russian speaking residents in Riga – says Kursitis. He also says that it is very important to stop emigration of ethnic Latvian young people who are not proficient in Russian. As one of the measures for it, Kursitis mentions imposition of administrative punishment for those employers who require Russian language proficiency disproportionately and unreasonably.  Antons Kursitis also considers that program on issuing residence permits to foreign investors should be halted as those people (foreign investors who receive residence permits) give nothing to Latvia just helping the banks and real estate traders to earn and worsening state language situation in Riga and Jurmala as majority of them are Russian speakers.

Following a complaint of a member of the Congress of Non-citizens Jelena Bacinska, the Security Police will check statements made by a Latvia writer Antons Rancans on incitement to ethnic hated. In his recent interview with newspaper Neatkariga, Antons Rancans said that there is a robbers’ gene in mentality of Russians and that they were created not for work but for robbery. Vesti Segodnya

Diena reports about the government’s plans to transfer 80% of education content in ethnic minority schools into Latvian language. According to the newspaper, such announcement made defenders of ethnic minority schools to speak about closure Russian schools. However, the Ministry of Education and Science asserts that ethnic minority schools will remain but the proportion of Latvian language will grow up to 80% starting with 2018. The Ministry also says that already now schools can use model of bilingual education 80/20%, however only 5% of schools use it. The Ministry plans to understand during this school year how to increase the language proportion in all ethnic minority schools. One of the activists for defence of Russian language schools Jakovs Pliners believes that planned changes would negatively impact education quality and students’ achievements.