Policemen who were watching the pickets say there were a hundred or two, mostly ethnic Russian organization activists. The pickets aimed to call the attention of the Latvian government and the European Union to the plight of ethnic Russians, who are not entitled to Latvian citizenship, one of the protesters said to Novosti.
The pickets passed a memorandum to Andrew Razbash, OSCE envoy to Latvia. It demanded franchise urgently granted non-citizens.
There are 600,000 non-citizens in Latvia-mostly Russian speakers, say Citizenship and Immigration Board statistics. The aliens are depived of many rights. They are not only disfranchised but banned certain pursuits-civil service, the police, fire service, etc. A non-citizen cannot have private medical or veterinarian practice, let alone governmental, or be employed in a drugstore. Non-Letts have not received Latvian citizenship throughout the fourteen years since the country regained independence.
Victor Kaluzhny, Russian Ambassador to Latvia. met in conference today with Ainars Latkovskis, the host country's Integration Minister. They said it was a fruitful conference, and determined to tackle the ethnic Russian minority's problems together from now on. The dialogue concerned ticklish issues, too-in particular, non-citizens' naturalization prospects and evaluation of particular events in 20th century history, the conferees said to the media.
"We ought to forget past wrongs and get to the negotiation table to tackle problems together," say conference minutes, to be found on the Integration Ministry Secretariat website.
Mr. Kaluzhny promised to work for prominent Russian performers to appear at Russian Culture Days in Latvia, whose time will be appointed later on. "Culture is what brings people together irrespective of their ethnicity," stressed the Russian ambassador.
The Integration Ministry Secretariat has for its key function to prevent Latvia developing into a two-community state.
