It made a statement on the issue after Latvia's government passed to parliament for consideration, May 17, a convention ratification bill with two provisos. If passed, the bill will de facto invalidate the convention for 450,000 Russian speakers permanently resident in Latvia without being granted its citizenship.
Latvian authorities do not deem it obligatory to comply with the convention, says the statement. In particular, they are robbing people of opportunities to speak in their native language to officials in areas compactly settled by ethnic minorities, and use their mother tongue for place-names.
"Even when the convention was offered to the Sejms [parliament] for ratification, the Cabinet was evidently ignoring well-known resolutions the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) passed in 2001 and 2003," points out the document.
More than that, the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE-Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe-called Latvia, in 2004, to ratify the convention without major provisos, accordingly amend the national legislation, and firmly comply with it in practice.
Meanwhile, Latvian parliamentarians are out to ratify a mutilated convention. To all appearances, they intend to fix discrimination of ethnic minorities in the national legislation for good, says the ministry.
"Moscow hopes, in the situation, for the Council of Europe, the OSCE and the European Union to make a principled and objective appraisal of official Riga's plans aimed to further worsen the plight of the non-titular population of Latvia," stresses the statement.
