LATVIAN PARLIAMENT THROWS OUT MOTION TO END ETHNIC MINORITY DISCRIMINATION








RIGA, March 8, 2001. /RIA Novosti correspondent Anatoly Baranovsky/. The parliament of Latvia, by an overwhelming majority, rejected a motion by deputies of the opposition faction "For Human Rights In Unified Latvia" to ratify the international convention on the protection of ethnic minorities, signed in 1995.


	The motion was supported only by the 17 members of the faction, with 19 deputies voting against and 46 abstaining.


	As a matter of fact, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe /PACE/, at its January this year session, urged Latvian authorities to ratify the convention.


	Janis Jurkans, chairman of the For Human Rights faction, assessed the parliament's decision as "another display of hypocrisy" on the part of the ruling coalition towards ethnic minorities in Latvia.


	Inese Birzniece, chairperson of the Latvian Road faction, speaking on behalf of right-wing deputies, gave in her turn three reasons why it is impossible to ratify the convention now. These are: absence of its accurate translation into Latvian, uncertainty which of the state structures will monitor its observance, and uncertainty which of the population categories should be regarded as ethnic minorities.


	In the view of political observers, Latvia's ruling forces, by torpedoing the ratification of the convention, pursue a specific aim - to ensure that only non-Latvians who are Latvia's citizens should be described as members of ethnic minorities, and to minimise the number of persons covered by this international document.


	Nor do the authorities want to see a number of provisions of the document adopted in Latvia. In particular those that stipulate the minorities' right to get and distribute information and ideas freely in their own language, the right to use their native language freely in private and in public, and moreover, both orally and in writing. Provisions of the convention also prescribe that in locations with most residents members of minorities public information /names of streets and offices/ should be allowed not only in the official language, but also in the language of the minorities concerned.