Sunday, 29 August 1999
August 29, 1999 |
Subj: Latvian chat Sunday 8/29
Date: 8/29/99 1:22:24 PM
Eastern Daylight Time
From: Sturgalve
File: RIGA-A~1.JPG (63087
bytes)
DL Time (32000 bps): < 1 minute
Sveiki
visi....
Just a quick note to remind everyone about Latvian chat here on
AOL starting at approximately 9pm EST until the last chatter drops out. You can
access the chat using the following link:
Town Square - Latvian chat
Attached is a picture down the side streets of Riga, with Doma Baznica (The Dom
Church) in the background, taken from Peters' trip in 1997. Following are 3
articles...
-on a bomb blast (!) last week in Riga--asssumed to be part of
organized crime turf wars;
-more positively, the slowly improving
"language" situation in Latvia;
-and commemoration of the Baltic Way, 10
years ago, where Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians linked hands from Tallin,
to Riga, to Vilnius to demonstrate for independence.
Ar visu labu!
Silvija un Peters
----------
RIGA, Aug
24 (Reuters) - A bomb exploded in front of a store in the centre of the Latvian
capital Riga on Tuesday, injuring three bystanders, a police official said.
A spokeswoman for the city's police said the bomb had exploded at a shop of the
Baltic nation's largest fruit juice maker, Gutta, around 9:30 am (0630 GMT).
"Two women injured by flying glass have been hospitalised, one in serious
condition," Ieva Zvidre, a Riga police department spokeswoman, told Reuters
adding that a third person had suffered minor injuries.
Zvidre said the
size of the device was yet not known and that no one had claimed responsibility
for the blast. An investigation has been launched.
"This is the first
incident in Riga this year where people were injured when explosives were
involved," she added.
Though Riga is widely considered a safe city with
little violent crime, there were 15 bomb blasts in the first half of 1999. Most
of the explosions have been linked to turf battles among organised crime
groups.
----------
Copyright 1999 Reuters Ltd. All rights
reserved.
The following news report may not be republished or
redistributed, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of
Reuters Ltd.
RIGA, Aug 25 (Reuters) - The Organisation for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) urged members of Latvia's large
Russian-speaking minority on Wednesday to take Latvian citizenship and learn
the national language.
Since last August 15,000 to 18,000 of the
approximately 650,000 Russian speakers applied to naturalise, OSCE High
Commissioner for National Minorities Max van der Stoel told a news
conference.
He gave no comparative figures but said the number of
applicants had increased "considerably."
"But I still express the hope that
more Russian speakers here will follow the example of those 15,000 and will
also...(start) the naturalisation process so that they will become full
citizens of this country," van der Stoel said.
Van der Stoel encouraged
more Russians to learn Latvian. "They don't have to abandon their own language
but it will be more convenient...if they know the state language," he said.
The Russian-speaking minority has been a major source of friction in Riga's
relations with Moscow, which accused the Baltic state of discrimination when it
imposed restrictions on who could become citizens after it quit the Soviet
Union in 1991.
In a referendum last year, voters overturned those limits,
opening up naturalisation procedures to anyone able to pass the a test in the
state's Latvian language.
Latvian law makers are to take up a draft state
language law this autumn, which President Vaira Vike-Freiberga returned to
parliament last month amid concerns its provisions for compulsory use of
Latvian in business were too restrictive.
Van der Stoel said he hoped
members of parliament would take into account the concerns of Freiberga, who
had said the last version was "too directed at limiting, rather than educating
Latvian society."
Latvia, which wants to become a member of the European
Union and of NATO, says the language needs protection after more than five
decades of Soviet occupation eroded its use.
But many Russian speakers saw
the original draft of the language law as an attempt to push them out of
economic and social life.
----------
Copyright 1999
Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved.
By Burton Frierson
RIGA, Aug 23
(Reuters) - The Baltic states on Monday looked back on the moment 10 years ago
when they joined hands by the millions to demand an end to Soviet rule --
shocking the Kremlin and jarring the memory of a world that had forgotten
them.
On August 23, 1989 -- the 50th anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet pact
that placed them under Moscow's control -- some two million Lithuanians,
Latvians and Estonians locked hands in a human chain spanning 600 km (373
miles) from Tallinn in Estonia to Riga in Latvia, and Vilnius in Lithuania.
The Baltic Way, as the event was known, was organised by the pro-independence
Popular Front movements that flourished under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's
glasnost reforms.
But it went far beyond what Moscow's new reformist meant
when he called for openness and was a first sign Gorbachev had lost control of
a revolution he had hoped to harness.
"Of course popular fronts were
allowed to be created by Soviet officials and Communist Party to help carry out
the ideas of perestroika and to break the orthodox branch of the Communist
Party," said MP Romualds Razhuks, a former Popular Front leader.
"But
people's energy was freed and no one could put it back into the bottle," said
Razhuks, a Baltic Way organiser.
The Baltic Way came on the heels of the
Latvian Popular front's call for independence in May 1989 and was followed by
Lithuania's declaration of full independence in 1990.
It was part of a
chain of events leading to a failed 1991 crackdown that killed 14 in Vilnius
and saw the Balts in all three countries stand firm in passive resistance to
Soviet tanks.
But the Baltic Way was the breakthrough event in the
independence movement.
"It was a non-violent protest action, which due to
its scale and originality...attracted the attention of the world," Latvian
President Vaira Vika-Freiberga told a conference marking the 10th anniversary
on Monday.
"(It) stirred the minds of people in the West...and aided in
the dismantling the naive belief in the Gorbachev phenomenon and prospects of
reconstructing the Soviet Union, showing that the evil empire was unravelling
itself," Vika-Freiberga added.
Although the West had never recognised the
Soviet Union's 1940 annexation of the Baltic states, many had largely forgotten
the three tiny nations.
But television images of the Baltic Way put
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania back on the map, at least in many people's
minds.
"I think it was on every possible TV station in the world at that
time. While...in New York I met diplomats who told me that was the first time
they heard of the Baltic states," said Trivimi Velliste, Estonia's ambassador
to the U.N. from 1994-98.
The Baltic states regained independence in
September 1991, following a failed putsch by hardliners in Moscow that led to
the breakup of the Soviet Union, and later launched the bloc's boldest market
and democratic reforms.