Latvian Non-citizens Hold Brussels Action Day to Fight Ethnic Minority Discrimination

BRUSSELS, November 28, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

The Latvian Non-Citizens' Congress - a group established to represent the nearly 300,000 stateless residents of Latvia - have successfully held an "Action Day" in Brussels aimed at raising awareness of their plight at the highest levels inside the European Union institutions.

Despite the cold, a team of representatives from Latvia, the United Kingdom, Spain and the United States held a high-profile demonstration outside of the European Parliament's Place Luxembourg headquarters in support of citizenship rights for the 300,000 stateless Russians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Poles and Jews living in Latvia who are denied to vote due to the country's citizenship laws.

Led by the Latvian Non-Citizens' Congress which campaigns to reform Latvia's discriminatory citizenship laws and widen access to the democratic process, activists met with Members of the European Parliament Tatjana Zdanoka and Miloslav Ransdorf, as well as representatives of the centre-left Party of European Socialists, conservative European People's Party and Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.  
The group also took their case to the European Economic and Social Committee, where they met with Spanish representative Luis Miguel Pariza Castanos to discuss pressing issues relating to discrimination in employment practices and the restrictions upon freedom of movement for so-called "non-citizens".

Commenting on the action day, the Speaker of the Non-Citizens' Congress Valery Komorov, who led the day's activities said:

"With every passing day, awareness inside the European Union's institutions of the discrimination that exists towards ethnic minorities in Latvia continues to rise up the political agenda.

"Quite rightly, politicians and EU officials are questioning how it can be right that so many people are denied basic citizenship rights in a European Union state in the year 2013.  

"We will continue to campaign and raise these issues until full human rights are respected in Latvia."

Note to Editor
During the lifetime of the USSR, the Soviet authorities settled a large number of Russians and other non-Latvians in the country (at the request of the country's Communist Party) to fill vacancies in factories and on construction projects. Many of the descendants of these workers remain in Latvia today.

In the years immediately preceding the collapse of the USSR, the Russophone minority in Latvia constituted a much larger percentage of the population than any comparable linguistic minority in any European country.  When Latvia re-gained its independence in 1991, only 52% of its population was ethnic Latvian. 37.2% of the population were ethnic Russians, with substantial Belarusian, Ukrainian, Polish, Lithuanian, Jewish and Roma communities also found in the country.

With Latvia's Declaration of independence in May of 1990, the 1919 citizenship law was officially reinstated - leaving the non-ethnic Latvian half of the population effectively stateless.  Later that year, the Latvian Parliament passed the Resolution "On the Renewal of the Rights of Citizens of the Republic of Latvia and Fundamental Principles of Naturalization" which divided the residents of Latvia into two major categories: Latvian citizens (approximately two thirds), and Latvian non-citizens (approximately one third).

Latvian citizenship was only provided to pre-war citizens (pre-1940) and their descendants - a situation that continues to leave 300,000 people unable to vote today.

In order to draw attention to the plight of "non-citizens" a group of activists from a broad spectrum of Latvia's ethnic minorities have held alternative elections for a Non-Citizens' Congress.

While recognising that the body has no formal power to decide Latvian government policy, the aim of the Congress is to provide a representative body that will become an effective channel for civil participation of "non-citizens" and ethnic Latvians concerned with ensuring a vibrant and unified political debate in the country.