Minority issues in Latvia, No. 17

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Subject: Minority issues in Latvia, No. 17

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Minority issues in Latvia, No. 17


Minority issues in Latvia, No. 17
Prepared by the Latvian Human Rights Committee (F.I.D.H.)
July 1, 2000

Regulations of the Cabinet envisaged by the State Language Law have
been prepared

The Ministry of Justice of Latvia has made public the draft
Regulations of the Cabinet of Ministers on the implementation of the
State Language Law - 8 out of 10 documents to be adopted before the 1
September 2000, according to the State Language law, two more drafts
(regulations on usage of language in public
information and on writing personal names) are still to be finalised.
Representatives of national minorities were not included into the
governmental working groups in charge for preparation of these
Regulations. 

The main issues of national minorities' concern are the following:

1. New regulations provide the right of inspectors of the State
Language Centre to visit all public and private institutions, business
enterprises and NGOs, to invite all persons for the Latvian language
command examination to the Centre, and to annul certificates of the
state language knowledge even if a person received it in full
accordance with the procedure envisaged by law.

2. New regulations envisage 6 categories of the state language
knowledge instead of existing 3 categories. "3 B" category (the
highest one) requires that a person must know Latvian at the level
"equal to mother tongue", including phraseologisms and dialectisms.
This category is necessary, for example, for members of all elected
bodies including municipal councils (also in villages), heads of the
state institutions, rectors and deans of higher educational
institutions, philosophers and historians, editors, secretaries,
barristers and notaries, prosecutors and judges etc. - including even
chairpersons of political parties and NGOs (clearly in contradiction
with the declared respect for freedom of language usage in private
sphere). Actually it means that all these positions and profession
will be reserved for Latvian native-speakers only, and persons
belonging to national minorities, if their mothertongue is not
Latvian, will not be able to work in these professions.

3. If the state language proficiency certificate is lost, it cannot be
renewed ("a duplicate cannot be issued"). 

4. Public events, organised by private persons, enterprises or
associations, must be translated into teh state language, if a)
persons representing Latvian state, municipal or judicial
insitutions/enterprises take part in these events, or b) the agenda
includes items related to participants' property or commercial
activity, c) all open cultural events, including explicitly mentioned
theatre performances, concerts, circus shows, opera, ballet or
pantomime.
  

Of course, it was hardly possible to expect that the regulations will
fix the fundamental drawbacks of the State Language law. However, many
provisions of the draft regulations contain new additionasl
problematic points and apparently aim not at protection of
Latvian-speakers' rights (for in most of cases Latvian-speakers are
not anyhow affected by these regulations) but at strengthening
exclusion of all minority languages from not only official, but also
from public sphere. Moreover, in some cases the regulations clearly
envisage interference into private sphere (besides examples mentioned
above, it is true eg in respect of the right to choose names of
private enterprises and NGOs - these names mist be only in
Latvian).        

MPs from the pro-minority faction "For Human Rights in Integrated
Latvia" submitted several proposals to the draft regulations aimed at
bringing the drafts in compliance with the internationally recognised
minority rights. The vice-chairman of the parliamentary faction Janis
Urbanovichs declared the faction's intention to call people to
participate in actions of civil disobedience if the Rules are adopted
by the Cabinet in the present wording.

In turn, head of the working group in charge for elaboration of the
draft regulations, director of the State Language Center Mrs Dzintra
Hirsha in her interview to Russian-language newspaper "Chas" said:
"[..as to minority rights], they have nothing to complain of. They are
allowed to live in Latvia, can get employed, Russian-language
newspapers are published, ORT (Russia's main TV-channel - A.D.) is
available via cable..."  ("Chas", 29 June 2000,
http://www.chas-daily.com/win/2000/06/29/l_30.html)

Alexei Dimitrov
Latvian Human Rights Committee (F.I.D.H.)

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