MINELRES: RFE/RL: Russian minorities outside Russia

[MINELRES moderator]

Original sender: RFE/RL <listmanager@list.rferl.org>


RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
________________________________________________________
RFE/RL (Un)Civil Societies
Vol. 3, No. 26, 26 June 2002

IN FOCUS

DIFFERING PERCEPTIONS OF OUTSIDE INTERVENTION RETARD PROGRESS ON
RUSSIAN MINORITIES

Observers at sessions of the Council of Europe or the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are familiar with the
routine: each time a state delegation or an NGO mentions human rights
violations allegedly committed by Russia against Chechens or other
minorities, Russian officials counter with claims about mistreatment
of Russians in the "near abroad," or former Soviet republics,
particularly in the Baltics. The OSCE's decision to remove its
missions from the Baltic states following a certain amount of progress
on such issues as language and citizenship, and the process of
accession to the EU has been met with increased Russian complaint of
discrimination. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov issued a plea to
OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Rolk Ekeus to help
protect minority groups of Russians whose civil rights he said
continued to be under attack by "repressive laws," reported strana.ru
on 17 June on the eve of the high commissioner's visit to the region.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Yakovenko told
RIA-Novosti, "About 700,000 people in those countries have no citizen
status and cannot enjoy some fundamental socioeconomic, political, and
cultural rights." Strana.ru, characterized by media watchers as close
to the Kremlin, quoted Yakovenko as saying that Latvia continued to
enforce discriminatory laws on language and education, and the Russian
tongue, spoken by 40 percent of the population, had been declared
foreign. Yakovenko said the Latvian parliament was refusing to ratify
a Council of Europe convention on national minorities, though the
country was a signatory to the document. Yakovenko also claimed that
in Estonia, laws on aliens, elections, and language were among
"filters" barring residents from taking part in political and economic
life. The Russian official cited the "outrageous case" of a Russian
girl denied emergency medical assistance because she could not explain
her condition in Estonian when asked by doctors. He did not provide
details, but strana.ru said "evidence of bad behavior was said to be
mounting."

The Russian website said such evidence included the case of Tatiana
Slivenko over violation of travel rights and infringement of "respect
for personal and family life" and a favorable resolution of the case
of Ingrida Podkolzina, who was denied the right to run in
parliamentary elections on the pretext of poor knowledge of the
Latvian language.

When the article from strana.ru was posted on Johnson's List, a
popular Internet discussion group about Russia, Pauls Raudseps,
editorial-page editor of "Diena," the widest-circulating daily in
Riga, challenged strana.ru's information. "In fact, the court has
refused to hear eight of the 11 complaints lodged by Ms. Slivenko and
her family," wrote Raudseps, "including one regarding a decision by
the Latvian authorities that Ms. Slivenko's husband had to leave
Latvia in accordance with the 1994 treaty on the withdrawal of the
Russian army from Latvia. A verdict on the remaining three complaints
is still pending, so in fact up to now the court has not taken any
decisions that could be used as proof of bad behavior on Latvia's
part."

Raudseps also accused strana.ru of creating the mistaken impression in
the case of Podkolzina, which had involved a claim of poor knowledge
of Latvian leading to denial of her participation in elections, that
the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found this restriction to be
impermissible. In fact, in its ruling in the Podkolzina case the ECHR
explicitly recognized Latvia's right to make knowledge of Latvian a
prerequisite for being elected to parliament - although later Latvia
removed this requirement from the law, which Raudseps said was further
indication of strana.ru's deliberate distortion. While Raudseps
conceded integration issues remained for Latvia, he characterized the
article as "misleading" and "counterproductive."

On 13 June, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the state
of enlargement negotiations. The provisions concerning minority issues
in Latvia have not been changed during the debates, according to
"Minority Issues in Latvia," a regular publication of the Latvian
Human Rights Committee. European MPs still hope that Latvia will
ratify the Framework Convention for the Protection of National
Minorities and will study the possibility of continuing to provide
access to upper-secondary-level education in Russian beyond 2004, said
the Human Rights Committee.

Events in the ongoing saga of language and cultural rights and
discrimination in Latvia are indicative of how deeply differing
perceptions of impartial outside interventions on behalf of the rule
of law continue to impede progress. In its 15 April issue, the Latvian
Human Rights Committee had described the Podkolzina decision as "the
first victory against Latvia" because the ECHR had found violation of
electoral rights in the imposition of an additional language exam,
despite the existence of a valid language certificate in her case -
although the court had not ruled against the language requirement per
se.

The Latvian Human Rights Committee described widely divergent press
coverage of the court's decision at that time. "Diena" ran a headline
on 10 April, "ECHR Acquits Latvia's Language Policy," and argued that
the court "has recognized the legal basis for the election law" and
that it "has dismissed complaints under Article 13 and 14" concerning
language requirements. By contrast, the Russian-language daily "Vesti
Segodnya" claimed that the ECHR has ruled that Latvia had to amend the
election legislation and to abolish the language requirements for
deputy candidates - a perception that persists in the media today as
evidenced by strana.ru.

Eventually the language requirement was dropped in May, a move praised
by the OSCE but which still left some Russian parliamentarians
discontent. A group of deputies from the Russian Duma's International
Affairs Committee introduced a resolution "on the discriminatory
policies of Latvian official institutions regarding Latvia's Russian
residents," BNS reported on 3 June (see "RFE/RL Baltic States Report"
17 June 2002). The resolution states that the already complicated
situation of Russian-speaking residents in Latvia worsened
considerably after the Latvian parliament passed amendments to the
constitution in April that bolstered the status of Latvian as the
state language and effectively banned the use of Russian in
legislative and executive bodies and local governments. The Duma
resolution claims the amendments were aimed at the "forced
assimilation of Russians and Russian speakers in Latvia."

Clearly, the continued festering of the debate and willful
misrepresentation of the nuances in the facts are a cautionary tale
about the limited efficacy of strictly legal and human rights remedies
to resolve problems of communal strife, and the need for continued
social and political dialogue and action. CAF

........................

(Compiled by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick)
*********************************************************
Copyright (c) 2002. RFE/RL, Inc. All rights reserved.

"RFE/RL (Un)Civil Societies" is prepared by Catherine Fitzpatrick on
the basis of reports by RFE/RL broadcast services and other sources.
It is distributed every Wednesday.

Direct comments to Catherine Fitzpatrick at cafitz@worldnet.att.net.
For information on reprints, see:
http://www.rferl.org/requests/
Back issues are online at http://www.rferl.org/ucs/

Technical queries should be e-mailed to: iteam@rferl.org

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE
Send an e-mail to ucs-subscribe@list.rferl.org.

HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE
Send an e-mail to ucs-unsubscribe@list.rferl.org.
_______________________________________________________
RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC