LATVIAN PUBLIC PROSECUTORS' OFFICES DO NOT ACCEPT CONVICTS' COMPLAINTS WRITTEN IN RUSSIAN








RIGA, March 12, 2001. / RIA Novosti correspondent Anatoly Baranovsky /. The Latvian public prosecutors' offices stopped accepting convicts' complaints written in Russian. The Russian newspaper "Vesti segodnya" (News Today), which is published in Riga, reported about this on Monday.


	Under the Law on the State Language, which took effect in Latvia on September 1, 2000, state and municipal institutions may accept people's applications written only in Latvian. In the newspaper's opinion, this is a flagrant violation of human rights, including the rights of Russian-speaking convicts, who are deprived of an opportunity to appeal to the authorities in their native tongue.


	Even Latvian state officials admit that the Law on the State Language is contrary to human rights. "This is really a problem. They demand that the Law on the State Language should be implemented, but nobody knows how this could be done," Vitolds Zahars, Chief of the penitentiary institutions' department, told the newspaper.


	Sandra Daugaviete, senior prosecutor with the Prosecutor-General's office of Latvia, is of the same opinion. She pointed to an obvious contradiction between the Law on the State Language and the exercise of human rights.