• Vesti Segodnya interviews director of the Riga 15th secondary school about education of foreign students

Vesti Segodnya interviews director of the Riga 15th secondary school Tatjana Kubasova about education of foreign students in the school. According to the director, there were 22 foreign students during 2013-2014 school year, but the first four foreign children entered the school four years ago. Mrs Kubasova says that families of foreign students come to Latvia due to different reasons – such as work, studies or in search for more secure and better life. The biggest difficulties educating foreign children teachers face if there is no intermediary language to communicate with them and there were cases when interpreter was invited. At first, foreign children attend individual classes on Russian or Latvian language and study for three-four hours the most basic issues. When the basic issues are mastered, foreign children join classes with the rest of the local students. According to the director, all foreign students who already graduated successfully passed the exams in Russian, Latvian and English languages. Some of the students continue to study in higher education establishments.

• Latvijas Avize reports about the Prime Minister’s  Report on Latvia’s National Security
• MP Boriss Cilevics: the EU has better mechanisms at monitoring human rights in the candidate states, than in member states

Latvijas Avize reports about the Report on Latvia’s National Security by the Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma. The report stresses Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine and its impact on security in Latvia. The report says that for Russia it is beneficial to show Latvia as ethnically divided, politically and economically weak country and it is expected that propaganda and discrediting campaigns against Latvia will increase.  The report also describes different actions aimed at consolidation of the society but without evaluation of the results.  

Vesti Segodnya publishes commentary of Latvian MP Boriss Cilevics following his participation at the OSCE conference on human rights defenders in Bern. According to Mr. Cilevics, in many OSCE countries human rights defenders are experiencing repressions. The EU has good mechanisms at monitoring human rights in the candidate states, yet once a country joins the Union, most of the monitoring stops and the EU has rather limited influence. In particular, the governments in Hungary, Greece and the Baltic states are trying to hinder and discredit the work of human rights defenders by using various tactics, such as accusations of financial violations, reports by the state security structures, labelling human rights activities as "anti-state".

• MEP form Latvia Tatjana Zdanoka: Crimea is a Russian revival

The MEP form Latvia Tatjana Zdanoka in an interview with TV channel LTV1 said that the case of Crimea is a Russian revival. Mrs Zdanoka also said that the Crimean case became possible because after the fall of the Soviet Union Russians residing in national republics became losers. According to Mrs Zdanoka, rights of Russian residents as ethnic minorities got infringed and Russian language was not granted status of official in the majority of the new states. Mrs Zdanoka also believes that Latvian could become a bridge between Russian and Western countries instead of choosing hostile rhetoric. Vesti Segodnya

• Saeima reviews a draft law stipulating that Latvian radio stations will have to broadcast their programmes in Latvian or in foreign language only

Vesti Segodnya reports about a draft law according to which each radio station in Latvia would have to broadcast only in one language -  in Latvian or in foreign language. The proposal is elaborated by the National Council on Electronic Mass Media with an aim to regularize situation in the radio market. The draft law proposes each radio station to choose its working language – state or foreign language. According to the director of the Association of Broadcasting Organisations Gunta Lidaka, there are radio stations in Latvia which do not fulfil their broadcasting licence obligation on language proportions. For instance there are radio stations whose licence says that it should broadcast 90% of programmes in Latvian and 10% in Russian, but in reality 100% of broadcasts are in Russian. Mrs Lidaka is sceptical about one of the draft law’s provisions which says that the radio stations currently broadcasting more than 50% in Latvian language will have to broadcast in Latvian only. The draft law also stipulates that 80% of programmes will have to be produced by radio station itself instead of re-broadcasting foreign programmes.  Especially, it will concern radio stations mostly broadcasting Russia’s radio programmes. The MP Boriss Cilevics (Concord Centre) believes that the aim of the draft law is to establish control over radio stations. He also believes, taking into account that all the radio stations will have to re-register, the Council on Electronic Mass Media might refuse re-registration for some radio stations and motivate its decision by the claim that there are enough of Russian language radio stations in some regions. Representative of a radio station “Baltkom” (broadcasting in Russian language) stated that, if the new regulation is approved, it is not clear what to do, for instance, when the live radio broadcast receives a call from its listener speaking in Latvian language.

• Politicians are "preying upon the pot of divisions"

According to culture researcher Deniss Hanovs, the politicians in Latvia are "preying upon the pot of interethnic relations, divisions and conflicting memories" and this denigrates the quality of political discussions. Activities such as of the Congress of Non-citizens, ideas about the autonomy of Latgale, wide celebrations of defeat of Nazi Germany on 9 May could be explained by irresponsible integration policy and the lack of inclusive messages by the politicians. Many Latvian Russians are sympathetic towards Russia because they do not fully understand the processes there and receive information about that country from Russian mass-media. To make sure Latvian message enters the living space of minorities, more funding should be allotted to Latvian language training. Diena