The “swinish” attitude, as President Putin plainly put it, of the Latvian authorities to Russians living in the country has started to bring an expected result. Russians began “voting with their feet”, or just fleeing Latvia, which is already facing a demographic decline challenge. Ethnic Latvians sometimes do the same and, all the more so, the ethnic hatred Latvia foment has been causing tragedies.
“If they further use their power to treat people, who wanted to live in this or another country, who worked there, created values for this country, in such a “swinish” manner, they will end up facing this swinelike behaviour inside their own country”. These words of the Russian president about the steps the Latvian authorities take in relation to Latvia’s Russian citizens have been truly confirmed these days.
Indeed, Russian people living in Latvia have been facing mistreatment in numerous and sophisticated ways. Russian citizens are now the most vulnerable group. They are former Latvian non-citizens who were refused the Latvian citizenship by the restored Latvian Republic in 1991 and took the Russian citizenship later.
Their Latvian resident permits were canceled last year, and they face the risk of being kicked out of their own homes unless they retake the Latvian language exam. As the majority of to-be-deported persons are elderly people, taking the Latvian language exam is quite a challenge for them.
Hitting the most vulnerable
Here is an account of a woman who has recently taken the language exam. She has posted on a social network that: “I felt verry sorry for elderly people and disabled persons in wheelchairs! I was willingly helping an old man next to me when I heard a knock on my table (obviously, the examiner was a school teacher). Well, they treat people like animals: there is no heating in rooms and it’s freezing cold in corridors where everyone is waiting for the exam and their turn for the speaking section, there are just ten chairs for thirty persons, with very elderly and sick people among them)…”
The public activist Olga Petkevich reports that some elderly people facing the risk of being ousted, literally, die from the stress. “A woman, 93, died in the palliative care department soon after they sent her a letter urging her to leave the country voluntarily. The thing is that people at this old age will not go anywhere. Yet, other working age people, with children, are leaving faced by the maltreatment…”, says the activist.
As per the act adopted earlier, the deportations of those Russian elderly people who have not passed the language exam can start already in December. So far, they have stopped paying pensions and social welfare benefits to them and canceled their rights to free medical care.
Head of the Citizenship and Migration Office Myra Rose explains: “The exclusion process is very complex and lengthy, as these persons have lived here for a very long time. This will be quite extensive and hard work”. Degi Karayev, a public advocate, who unofficially discussed the matter with MoI staff posted in his blog: “I expect there will be no deportations of elderly people before the decision of the Constitutional Court. The officials in charge will hold back as much as they cannot to be scapegoated and then the court will decide what is next”.
It is true that the Constitutional Court of Latvia is now handling the case after receiving a claim of the Accord and the Stability opposition parties to cancel the unfair act. However, the proceedings will take much time, with the first Court meeting on the matter to take place only on January 9. Until then, the people, with their documents taken away, have to muddle through without pensions and medical care in a real danger to lose their lives.
Pushing on all fronts
The Russians with Latvian citizenship are also exposed to a massive ethnic pressure. The two main pain points heavily exploited by the authorities are the elimination of Russian-language education and the combat against the historical memory.
On December 7, the Latvian Constitutional Court confirmed that last year’s Latvia’s destruction of the monuments to those who liberated it from Nazism “restored the historical justice and protected the Latvian statehood”. This was the response of the highest instance to the claim of the city of Daugavpils, which struggled to protect the monuments in its territory.
The Latvian parliament (Saeima) is considering a new act on the elimination of all the remaining monuments in the country located on graves in community centers. They suggest moving the remnants buried under these monuments to collective graves far away from people’s sight taking last year’s Estonian practice. A total of 69 tombstones were listed for removal.
The situation is as grim in education. Last year, Latvia adopted the law, which will leave Russian children even without the remaining lessons taught in their native language. There has been a recent thorough audit of Latvian schools to check teachers’ perfect command of the Latvian language forcing many to resign. Today, many Russian children struggle over their home assignments – doing their homework in Russian took an hour while doing the same in Latvian takes the whole evening. The Latvian Education Ministry is just brushing the problem aside: “Not speaking Latvian is a kid’s own problem”.
Response in action
Surprisingly, with everything described above, not only ethnic Russians but also Latvians are leaving Latvia! “I got a call from a happy newborn father Rolands Gailitis who said they had just become Russian citizens after picking-up their passports bearing a double-headed eagle. His wife Inita and four kids – Mikus, Markus, Niklas and Alexander, also became Russian citizens together with Rolands. The smallest family member was born already in Russia on August 25”, reports Alexey Stefanov, a journalist, in his Telegram channel.
According to him, the problems of this Latvian family living in Sweden began after a watchful neighbour denounced them telling they allegedly watched Russian TV channels. This caused concerns of child protection agencies, which took a decision to remove the kids from the family. The next court meeting on the case was scheduled for January, but, waiting aside, the head of the family put his wife and kids in the car and headed for Finland to reach Russia further.
The family did not have Russian visas. They just stopped at the Finnish side of the border and rushed to the Russian border police officers crying for an asylum.
Their request was approved, and they were taken to Kostomuksha, a small town near the border, where local authorities and volunteers helped the family with temporary accommodation and staple goods. The Gailitis did not want to return to Latvia fearing that the Latvian authorities will take the side of the Swedish police and keep trying to remove the kids from the family. They decided to naturalize in Russia instead and succeeded to do so. “The head of the family Rolands Gailitis told me he worked as a carpenter in the town’s utility service. A three-bedroom apartment was provided to the family and it has been renovated lately. The happy couple and the four kids have just moved to their new home”, writes Stefanov.
He also refers to his conversation with a former Riga resident Natalia Smirnova who has moved to Khabarovsk with her husband and two kids this year. According to her, various approaches are in use to influence Russian people living in Riga, to hint them they do not belong there, hated and wanted to be gone. “And, to be honest, it hurt me, I felt like crying. Because you studied here, you pay good taxes, investing all that in the country and yourself as a society member, but all this is nothing and no one needs it. And then I asked my husband: “What did you say about moving, I think it’s time”, remembers the ex-Latvian woman.
The last straw, Smirnova adds, was what the school teacher did, saying to her pupils that if they wanted to study in their “occupant” language, they had to get out. “What can they teach if the treat their pupils in such a way? I understand that kids can get under your skin but saying things like “Get lost in Russia” is the last straw. All the more so, all these kids were, by all means, born in Latvia like their parents and, most probably, their grandmothers and grandfathers, too. This teacher is 40 herself, she should understand it, but this does not happen, as this has become a national cause”, Smirnova exclaims.
All the while, Latvians are voting with their feet: according to the known accounts, the number of people moving to Russia increased several times compared to previous years. However, incidents still happen, including tragic ones.
The first murder caused by nationalist controversy has recently happened in the Latvian Republic. On November 17, the local businessman Igor Hait, an ethnic Jew, shot another businessman Andris Lubka, an ethnic Latvian, at a parking lot in Rezekne town. According to Hait’s wife, before it happened Lubka blocked her car with his van. And when she asked him to unblock the way he called her “a Russian whore”.
The crying woman phoned her husband and he drove to the place right away. But talking did not work well, Lubka (who is also a member of Ludza municipality) blurted out at Hait that all Jews should have been killed back in 1941. Both Lubka and Hait remembered very well that in 1941 the German occupants and their Latvian accomplices killed 70 thousand local Jews in Latvia and 20 thousand Jews brought from other countries.
Having heard that, Igor Hait felt like blowing up. He snatched a handgun out of his pocket and shot five times: Andris Lubka died on the spot. Given the rarity of such a tragedy, it can be a sign of the ethnic hatred to national minorities instilled by the Latvian authorities.