In July, the Latvian government announced the country would take in 250 refugees over the next two years, including 200 refugees under the relocation program. Another 50 persons will be resettled through national and multilateral schemes.
The demonstrators were holding posters reading "No to NATO victims in Latvia," "Latvian leadership ─ to the international court," and "This is not our war." Many of them held the flags of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in their hands.
On June 25, the heads of EU member states approved a plan to relocate some 40,000 migrants already in Greece and Italy, as well as to admit a further 20,000 asylum seekers. The issue of the migrant quota implementation has become a topic of national debate in Latvia.
Latvia's former President Vaira Vike-Freiberga said earlier in the day that 250 people is an insignificant amount of refugees for the country to host, adding that "Latvia signs a certificate of poverty, morally discrediting itself," if it claims it cannot take this amount of people and integrate them into society.