POLITICS-CULTURE: Latvia Introduces New Language Law

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Blagov

MOSCOW, Sep 4 2000 (IPS) - Russia might have been angry when it was first proposed, but Latvia’s neighbour was silent when a new law linking proficienc y in Latvian to employment opportunities in that country went into effect on the w eekend.

The law lists three levels of language proficiency. The employer must decide which level is appropriate for the post he must fill. For instance th e government now requires all applicants for civil service jobs to pres ent their applications and paperwork in Latvian.

“Only those fluent in Latvian will hold official positions or get go od jobs, while the rest of us can only collect garbage,” says Vladimir, a Rus sian speaker with a Latvian passport.

The law stipulates that Latvian is the only language to be used at pu blic functions and in business, even those involving only Russian speakers .. It prohibits the use of Russian in the workplace.

“We talk to clients in their languages, whatever the rules,” says A ndrei, an ethnic Russian and a manager of an Internet cafe in the Latvian capit al Riga.

The legislation also requires the names of private firms to be given in Latvian and non-Latvian names in official identification documents to be spel led out according to Latvian grammatical rules. The Latvian language, also ca lled Lettish, uses the Latin letters, unlike Russian.

When the law was first proposed in 1998 Russia was outraged, calling it discriminatory and charged that it was an attempt to push Russians to the margins of Latvian society.

Some 700,000 of Latvia’s 2.4 million people are ethnic Russians. Ma ny of them moved into the country during the Soviet era and speak little or no L atvian.

The European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Security and Co- oper ation in Europe (OSCE) have warned Riga that a number of the law’s provisions violate international human rights guaranteeing free speech. However, on the weekend the OSCE approved the new rules as being in conformity with Latvia’s international obligations.

The EU and the OSCE have urged the Baltic states, notably Latvia, to do more to integrate their Russian minorities. Latvia is planning to join the EU .. It was invited in late 1999 to begin talks on EU membership, but does not ex pect to be asked to join the grouping until 2005.

On the OSCE’s recommendation, the new law allows for international pu blic events to be held in languages other than Latvian – but with mandator y parallel translation into Latvian. A Latvian scholar told IPS this could put a n end to academic conferences in the country, because parallel translation cos t some 3,000 dollars per day which Latvian academic institutions cannot affo rd.

Most Russian speakers complain the new law will seriously hamper thei r businesses and will deepen tensions between Russians and Latvians.

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has been incre asingly accusing Latvia of discriminating against its ethnic Russian resident s, most of whom moved there after Stalin forcibly annexed the republic into the Soviet Union in 1940. Around 550,000 bearers of old Soviet passports in Latv ia were left stateless when the documents expired in October 1997.

Russian anger against Latvia was further fuelled by annual reunions o f Latvian veterans of the Nazi SS in Riga. Moscow argued that the Latvian SS br igade was guilty of war crimes and was condemned by the international tribunal in Nuremberg. Being singled out as the only nation on earth to celebrate officially its Waffen SS heritage, Latvian authorities recently withd rew official support of the controversial reunions.

When the language bill was first made public two years ago, the Russi an government fiercely attacked its Latvian counterpart and said it woul d consider economic sanctions if the bill were made law. Such sanctions would seriously hurt the Latvian economy because not only is Russia one of its largest trading partner bilateral trade in 1999 was 1.05 billion dol lars – but more than 20 percent of Latvia’s gross domestic product (GDP) comes from fees charged for the transit of Russian oil and other goods through Latvia n territory.

There was a talk of finding ways to bypass Latvia to ship oil to the West, notably by speeding up building new oil terminals on the Russian coas t of the Gulf of Finland.

However, right now Russia has few alternative routes for oil exports. Some 11 percent of its 100-million-tons-a-year oil exports go through Latvia’ s main port of Ventspils, second only to Russia’s own Black Sea terminal of Novorossiisk, which handles 25 percent of crude exports.

The talked-about sanctions were never formally announced, but some Ru ssian regions effectively restricted Latvian imports.

Meanwhile there has been no repeat of the earlier rhetoric now that t he law has been implemented. In fact, the enforcement of the controversial langu age law apparently went unnoticed by the Kremlin – probably due to the string of disasters Russia has faced in the month of August, which included the sinking of a nuclear submarine and a bombing in Moscow.