Minority issues in Latvia, No. 8

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Subject: Minority issues in Latvia, No. 8

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Minority issues in Latvia, No. 8


Minority issues in Latvia, No. 8
Prepared by the Latvian Human Rights Committee (F.I.D.H.)
September 30, 1999
 
News from the Saeima
 
On September 16, the Saeima (the Parliament) of Latvia sent new draft
amendments to the law "On the Status of Citizens of the former USSR
who have Latvia's or other state's citizenship". This law regulates
legal status, rights and obligations of the so-called "non-citizens" -
i.e. persons who were permanent residents of Latvia before restoration
of the state independence in 1991, who, according to the Citizenship
law, do not qualify for Latvian citizenship, and who do not possess
citizenship of any other state. These amendments envisage grounds for
revoking of the non-citizen`s status: in particular, all those persons
who are or were serving in foreign armed forces, police, state
security and intelligence bodies, as well as "juridical institutions",
are subject to deprivation of the non-citizen's status. Also
deprivation of the non-citizen's status is envisaged for those persons
who have or had after July 1, 1992 a residence registration (the
so-called "propiska") in any of the CIS states. 

All these grounds are not mentioned as preventing persons from
obtaining the non-citizen's status in the law currently in force,
thus, the persons in question might be deprived of their legal status
retroactively. 
Besides, it is not clear what legal status thes persons deprived of
their current non-citizen's status could claim. In particular, the Law
on the Status of Stateless Person adopted by Latvian Parliament in
February 1999, says that in order to be recognized as stateless, a
person must have legally arrived in Latvia and "legally reside" in
Latvia. The persons deprived of the non-citizen's status who will be
left without any ID can hardly meet the latter criteria. 

Thus, if these amendments are adopted, not only number of stateless
persons in Latvia will increase (contrary to provisions of the 1961
Convention of the Reduction of Statelessness, 1997 European Convention
on Nationality and other international instruments), but many more
persons will become "illegal residents". It should be mentioned that
the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in August
1999 recommended that Latvia "...regularize as soon as possible the
status of persons who do not qualify
for citizenship and are not registered as residents, in order to avoid
discrimination against them" (see CERD concluding observations on
Latvia at
http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/CERD.C.55.Misc.39.Rev.4.En?OpenDocument).
The proposed amendments go in the exactly opposite direction. 


Entrance examinations in Daugavpils Pedagogical University
 
Interesting information was published in Daugavpils` press (Daugavpils
is the second biggest city in Latvia, with almost 90 per cent
Russian-speaking population is). Some graduates from Russian-language
schools failed to enter the Daugavpils Pedagogical University in the
speciality "psychologist" in spite of the fact that they passed the
entrance examinations better and received bigger number of points than
the graduates from Latvian-language schools who have been accepted.
The pro-rector S.Rabsha explained that it had been done in hope that
the graduates from Latvian schools would return to work to their
schools (particularly in countryside) after having graduated from the
University. He did not hope of the same with reference to the
graduates from Russian-language schools. It should be stressed that
Latvian is a single language of instruction for graduates from the
both Latvian- and Russian-language schools. It seems that reasonable
question - shouldn't such a selective approach be considered
discriminatory? - did not come in the university leadership's mind.  


An amalgamation of two boards will take place?
 
Amalgamation of the Naturalisation Board and the Department of
National Affairs of the Ministry of Justice is envisaged by the
concept of re-structuring suggested by the Ministry of Justice. Also
all functions related to the citizenship issues are to be transferred
to this joint body from the Citizenship and Migration Board. The new
unit will probably be titled "the Board of Naturalisation and National
Affairs / National Minorities". The main idea behind the design seems
to be full use of high management skills of the current leadership of
the Naturalisation Board. On the other hand, this re-arrangement might
entail limitation of all the problems of national minorities to
naturalisation only. 

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

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