Taking away the Latvian public' s right to choose what they see in public

I’m no fan of swastikas and hammers and sickles. I would avoid a public event where lots of either were present. Then again, I might want to get an answer to my WTFs on seeing such a spectacle and go take a closer look and maybe listen to what these people were saying (if they were amenable to having spectators and being listened to).

The point is – regardless of whether it is five guys waving a swastika flag, or a speaker haranguing passersby under a Communist hammer and sickle poster – or a non-political street juggler – the choice of whether to look at or listen to what is being expressed is MINE! It seems quite reasonable that as an adult, I have the right to choose what I see or hear in a public place without interference by the government, especially if those bringing the message are not forcing me to listen to it. As far as the message being offensive to me, to others, anyone can choose not to listen or to go away.

Today, the Latvian parliament or Saeima took another step toward limiting what I may see, listen to, or read on display at a public event – not just a political demonstration, but any public gathering. A law banning the display of Nazi and Soviet flags and symbols was passed in the so-called second reading, which still leaves some time for final editing and modifications, but the decision in principle was made. The Latvian state is going to tell me and all other adults in this country what they may or may not see, hear or read. I think they called that censorship back in the day.

Moreover, the choice as to the whether the banned symbols are being displayed with the intent, as the draft law says, to glorify the crimes of the Nazi or Soviet regimes, to advocate war, the violent overthrow of the government, or disobedience and violations of the law – will basically be left to the police on the street. In other words, the guy or girl who can clearly see the criminal intent in someone stealing another person’ s wallet or slapping, unprovoked, someone else upside the head – will have to decide on the matter of criminal intent in some pretty complex situations and contexts. Can a police officer know whether a man reading from a critical annotated edition of Lenin’ s essays (with a Soviet flag on the cover) at a public meeting (to promote his book) is “glorifying the Soviet regime”  or calling for the overthrow of the government – or merely presenting a part of his work?  One wrong decision and the police will have put a strong chilling effect on – book tours? While this is a somewhat contrived example, the point is that it is harder to undo a mistaken decision to arrest and disperse a public gathering because someone has the “wrong” symbols than to not do it at all. Those in power in Latvia have such chronically low trust from the public that any promises of  “it won’t happen again” will never be believed, and those most easily intimidated will hesitate to express radical views.

This law is a mistake and will need to needless repression and chilling of public debate. Hateful symbols and speech must be met with arguments, not the threat of prison, especially when the choice of who to arrest may be arbitrary or based upon insufficient understanding of a situation. On the whole, more laws against hateful symbols serve only to reduce the right of Latvia’ s inhabitants (free access to viewpoints is not only the privilege of citizens, but a right for all) to see, hear, or read whatever they please. Such laws are also an infringement of the freedom of expression, which I believe should be as close to absolute as is possible 

Some belated (unpublished) thoughts on the March 16 events in Latvia

This was submitted to a major international publication, but didn't fit into what it needed (also, perhaps, it was a little late, as we hadn't agreed on covering the events of March 16). I post it here because I think there are some interesting points to be made about the repercussions of the annual March 16 war veterans march and counter-demonstrations. It is written in a news analysis style. 

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Deafening sirens from “anti-fascist” counterdemonstrators on March 16 disrupted a march to commemorate Latvians, mostly draftees, who fought on the German side in World War II, but they also started off a week of political tremors in the Baltic country that uncovered some sinister cracks in Latvia’s ruling three-party coalition.

The loud counter-demonstration against the march by a dwindling number of Waffen-SS veterans and around 1 000 supporters, set events in motion that could tighten laws regulating freedom of assembly in Latvia and perhaps impose special restrictions and penalties on forms of expression deemed to commit “sacrilege” against national symbols.  

Going along with such measures could be the price that Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis of the centrist liberal Unity party must pay for maintaining the tense “stability” of Latvia’s coalition and for turning a blind eye to the creeping influence of the nationalist right. Otherwise, nationalist politicians would have sought a vote of confidence against the man responsible for policing the annual veterans march and accompanying counter-demonstrations, Minister of Interior Rihards Kozlovskis, a member of the liberal Reform Party. The relatively new party has been moribund in recent voter polls and its unlikely to get seats in Latvia’s parliament when elections are held in late 2014. 

The screws on expression could be tightened because another member of Latvia’s government coalition, the National Alliance, which brings together several right-of-center nationalist factions, was outraged at the disruptive protest by a small group of demonstrators, many of whom were Latvian Jews. The counterprotestors denounced the Waffen-SS march as a glorification of Nazism even while admitting through a spokesman, Josif Koren, that most veterans were probably not Nazis.

As non-Germans, Latvians were not allowed to join the Nazi party. In pre-war Latvia, which had an authoritarian regime from 1934 to 1940, the small fascist “Thundercross” movement was banned. Its leader Gustavs Celmins was driven into exile only to return with the German occupation of Latvia in 1941, then fall out with the Germans and end up in a series of concentration camps to finally be liberated by American forces in May 1945. Mr. Celmins died in San Antonio, Texas, in 1968.  

As the March 16 sirens turned to booming Russian wartime music and then to a stentorian voice reciting wartime Nazi crimes in Latvia and elsewhere, two members of the Latvian parliament or Saeima, representing the National Alliance, rushed a rapidly-set-up cordon of riot police and, failing to get close enough to topple the counterdemonstrators’ loudspeakers, tore down some posters of photographs of cringing Latvian Jewish women about to be shot by a German Einsatzgruppe or unit dedicated to executing civilians.

One of the parliamentarians, Janis Dombrava, threatened to have fired the policemen who restrained him from continuing his rampage ripping down posters. He later apologized on television for having acted “in an emotional state” because the Latvian police had been ordered “to protect those committing sacrilege against our sacred place (the Freedom Monument) and our national soldiers.” Mr. Dombrava’s quasi-religious phrases may set the tone for what the National Alliance wants included in any new legislation pertaining to public assembly, demonstrations and the like.

Mr. Kozlovskis apologized for the events of March 16 despite the fact the City of Riga under mayor Nils Usakovs of the opposition and allegedly “pro-Kremlin” Harmony Center was responsible for granting permission for both the march and the counter-demonstration. In withdrawing its demand to call a vote of no confidence against Mr. Kozlovskis, the National Alliance under its co-chairman Raivis Dzintars, who was also involved in the March 16 scuffle with police, gave the Interior Minister a three-month grace period to push through legislation to prevent a repeat of the events of March 16, by which the nationalists meant the use of deafening sound and permitting two opposing events in such close proximity, but also the “ sacrilege” of allowing a protest by those seen as disloyal and subversive – among the milder epithets hurled at the counterdemonstrators.

Some of the harsher remarks were phrases like “Jews don’t belong here” using an older Latvian word, which phonetically is pronounced zheeds but is close to the Russian zhid, a term of abuse. While pre-war Latvian Jews referred to themselves as (plural) zheedee, the accepted present day word is the Latvian word ebreji or Hebrews, a shift in use roughly like the move from “Negro” to “Afro-American” in the US over the past few decades. In another disturbing sidelight to the March 16 events, wreaths left at the Freedom Monument by the counterdemonstrators to Jewish victims had ribbons with memorial texts removed and were then covered by flowers laid by the veterans and their sympathizers.

While no public figures from the National Alliance made any remarks about Jews, the mutterings among those gathering ahead of the Waffen-SS veterans march suggested that there were some anti-Semitic and extremist elements in the crowd, almost all of them too young to have participated in World War II. This gives some credence to claims by Latvia’s “anti-fascists” and some sympathizers who came to Riga, such as New York Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, that the Nazi aspect to March 16 was not in the veterans, but in some of their younger followers.

It would be unfair to say that the National Alliance has anything to do with Latvia’s handful of neo-Nazis. The “All For Latvia” component of the National Alliances states that it is for “positive nationalism” in the English-language page of its website and elaborates by saying that “Latvian nationalism to us means the elevation of kinship to the level of whole nation. Each Latvian is like a family member, who may not be forsaken in adversity, who must be cared for in difficult times, and who is worthy of respect or compassion by the mere fact of being one of our own.”

Nonetheless there are parallels between the Latvian nationalists and similar political movements elsewhere in Eastern Europe, such as the Jobbik party in Hungary. The readiness of the party not only to urge respect for Latvian national symbols but to enforce it under penalty of law suggest an authoritarian streak, although elsewhere in the world, there is a mixed picture of laws on such matters as flag desecration, ranging from First Amendment protection in the US to misdemeanor and disorderly conduct penalties in some European countries.

The National Alliance and some of its sympathizers in recent months have also pushed such “culture wars” issues as opposing gender equality education in primary schools. The nationalists criticized a book adapted from a Danish textbook suggesting that kindergarten children switch gender roles, with girls playing boys’ games and the like. However, a nationalist politician didn’t hesitate to bring military weapons (presumable disabled) such as rifles, machine guns and grenades into a private kindergarten he owns as part of a lesson in “patriotism” for pre-school children.

Some political analysts, such as Iveta Kazoka, a researcher at Latvia’s Providus Center for Public Policy says “ I am not convinced that the National Alliance wants more repressive laws with regard to demonstrations because they themselves may wish to organize such demonstrations. They will try to define restrictions that their own activities won’t fall under, but that will be hard to do in human rights terms.

Ainars Leijejs, a Latvian journalist covering political affairs points out that the nationalists are not the only politicians narrowing democratic rights. Mr. Dombrovskis Unity party backed a change in Latvia’s law on referendums, raising the minimum number of signatures to get a referendum initiative started to 30 000 for 10 000 earlier. This was a reaction to last year’s failed referendum to make Russian a second state language in Latvia, which some commentator said was evidence that the voters at large will simply reject controversial referenda without raising the threshold for initiating them.

March 16 "freestyle" with sirens, songs and scuffles

And so another March 16 with its commemorative march and counter-demonstrations passes, this time with no one attempting to limit anyone's free speech - at last. Long learning curve, Latvia. The next step after the events of the first "freestyle"  March 16 would be somewhat better planning to separate the marchers and the contras, especially since the Latvian Antifascist Committee had planned a rather loud audio protest. It could have been better placed near the Laima clock and the Chili pizzeria, so that every marcher passing would have heard the protest message without it booming at the flower-layers at the base of the Freedom Monument, which was, at least officially, a moment of remembrance of the dead.
The counterdemonstrators decorated their location with photographs of people being shot during the Holocaust, mostly in Latvia, but some of victims in Russia. In any case, these things happened before the Latvian Legion was formed, and the only connection could be that some of these killings (in Russia and Belarus) could be attributed to the Latvian Police Battalions, formed soon after the German occupation in 1941 and used for purposes other than combat. One task for historians (unless I have missed research on this) would be to document, to the extent possible, what persons from the Police Battalions were transfered to either of the two Latvian Waffen-SS divisions and whether any of them could be linked to war crimes. That would set the record straight to the extent possible after 70 years.
On the "Latvian"  side, there was some needless ugliness. The wreaths laid by the Antifascist Committee were, again, defaced rather than simple moved aside to make room for the flowers from the veterans and their supporters. If the Latvian Tennis Federation comes and lays flowers after the Latvian Basketball Federation has placed a wreath, they would just politely move it, wouldn't they? I also heard mumblings in the crowd that "Jews should not be here". This is deranged. Jews have been "here" in some cases for hundreds of years, they were and are Latvian citizens and have a right to remember their dead when and how they please (which is exactly what the Legionnaire supporters say about the old war veterans). The Jewish and other victims of the German occupation died in the same war as the veterans, and they, unlike the Legion or the Latvian units of the Red Army, were non-combatant civilians. Wacko theories that all the Jews of Latvia deserved to be shot because a few Jews (mainly from Russia) were linked to Soviet power have no place in serious discussion (and Latvians also played a prominent role in establishing the USSR, so where to we go with that? Answer - 1937, end of story for most of them. Do we want to go on along these lines?).
Another disturbing thing was that someone placed a photograph of one of the most decorated Latvian Waffen-SS officers, Roberts Ancāns, at the base of the Freedom Monument. Ancāns, an Obersturmfuhrer  in the Waffen-SS is covered with medals and regalia, including the Iron Cross, all for heroism in battle, multiple wounds and the like. Ancāns came into the Legion via the Police Battalions, before that, he volunteered for the Latvian Army before the war and occupation, intending, as lawyer, to become a legal affairs officer. He later emigrated to the US, where he died in 1982, He probably was "clean" of any suspected misdeeds, as he cleared the screenings that ex-Germany military refugees were subjected to. But whatever the story was, putting a person in full German regalia in the middle of a field of flowers, behind two wreaths from the anti-fascists that had been defaced and buried in other flowers just sends the wrong message. I could see placing a photo of General Jānis Kurelis in his Latvian Army uniform (he did end up in the Waffen-SS, but led a mutiny against the German authorities) among the flowers, but not someone who broadcasts the absolutely wrong message at first glance.
Finally, I am surprised (unless I missed someone at the earlier sessions) that there were no mainstream Latvian media covering the conference organised by the Anti-Fascist Committee, which was attended by some American former and serving state legislators, as well as a former Belgian and German member of the European parliament, and Latvia's MEP Tatyana Zhdanok (admittedly, a controversial "pro-Russian" politician who wins no popularity contests among the ethnic Latvian population). Here, they would have heard an explanation of the counterdemonstrators' motives. There was also a former Russian-born member of the Israeli Knesset, who tragically died while in Riga to attend the conference.
In any case, here is my video on the events:

UPDATED Denies Claim Latvian journalist consented to psychiatric hospitalization

UPDATE:
Leonīds Jākobsons has categorically denied to Latvian media that he consented to be placed in a mental hospital for obeservation, essentially calling the pietiek.com story misleading or a fabrication. Jākobsons says that he was placed in the hospital despite protesting the decision to put him under observation to the investigating prosecutor. 
The police and prosecuting authorities have not denied that they (or so they claim) had the legal right to confine Jākobsons for 30 days of observation (a measure usually applied in civilized countries to those suspected of a crime so violent or bizarre that, instead of a pre-trial confinement to jail, the suspect is examined to settle the possible issue of sanity at an early stage). I could see this being done, God forbid, to someone firing a sniper rifle at the maiden topping the Latvian Freedom Monument and loudly shouting that the pink crocodiles in the nearby Bastejkalns park canal were dancing and singing a song telling him to do this.) But it should not have been done to Jākobsons. 

The Latvian investigative journalism portal Pietiek.com claims that the Latvian journalist Leonīds Jākobsons consented to being confined to a mental hospital for observation in connection with an investigation of his role in publishing leaked e-mails from Riga mayor Nils Ušakovs.

The story (in Latvian) is here: http://www.pietiek.com/raksti/_neka_personiga__noklusejis,_ka_jakobsons_pats_piekritis_ievietosanai_psihiatriskaja_slimnica
It mentions that the psychiatric examination was based on a 20 year old medical record that may have questioned Jākobsons mental stability.
Pietiek.com also indirectly mocks those journalists and public figures who hastened to call Jākobsons hospitalization (where he says he was together with murder suspects) an outrage.
While the issue of exactly how and why the controversial editor of the Russian-language kompromat.lv ended up in the "loony bin", and why it was not reported at the time (late 2011?) is a gap in the whole story and may reflect flawed journalism, it is also possible that Jākobsons was pressured into agreeing (perhaps facing pre-trial arrest in a similar social environment of murderers, thieves, etc.).

New outrages against a journalist in Latvia?

The Latvian prosecutor’s office has filed criminal charges against the Latvian journalist Leonīds Jākobsons, who edits a website in Russian, www.kompromat.lv, fr allegedly stealing and publishing some e-mail correspondence by Riga’s mayor Nils Ušakovs, a member of the Harmony Center party.

The correspondence seemed to suggest that Ušakovs was in touch with some shady characters in Russia, as well as with a local Russian diplomat later labeled a spy.

So far, there is no evidence that Jākobsons himself cracked Ušakovs gmail account, rather, that someone provided him with the already “stolen” emails, so it is difficult to understand how the journalist can be brought up on these charges. When the Latvian television journalist Ilze Jaunalksne’s phone conversations, recorded by the State Revenue Service, were leaked, it was the Revenue Service employees who were guilt of illegal wiretapping, not the media that published the transcripts.

At the same time the investigative television news program Nekā personīga (Nothing Personal) revealed that Jākobsons had been committed to a mental hospital for 30 days for observation in connection with the criminal investigation. This kind of abuse of journalists has not been seen since the Soviet era under the KGB secret police. Then, most journalists were obedient to the Communist regime, and only people

The alleged incident took place in November 2011, so that the filing of charges occurred with remarkable speed for Latvia. It took twice as long to file charges against persons suspected of taking bribes from the German automaker Daimler, and when personal, partly nude private photos of a public figure and advisor to the Latvian president were circulated on the internet, the perpetrators were never found.

In any case, the incident is similar to Wikileaks or event the Pentagon Papers, because it concerned the Riga mayor’s correspondence in an official capacity, suggesting ties (possibly, if not probably inadvertent) with Russian intelligence, as well as attempts to influence the content of some Russian-language media. The news value of the information provided could be considered as overriding any privacy issues. It would be another story if the mails were purely personal – to the mayor’s wife or family friends. But even some personal correspondence of a public figure, such as an official having an extramarital affair in a context where this would be politically damaging or signal dangerous risk-taking, could be news that overrides privacy considerations.

The Jākobsons case, especially the part about confinement to a mental hospital when a brief interview with a psychiatrist would have sufficed to determine that he wasn’t a raving loon, is very disturbing, though I am unaware (nor has anyone fully reported) the exact details. Once can suppose that it happened shortly after the journalist had his website servers seized.

A few months later, Jākobsons, while coming home with his young son, was attacked and had his face slashed by unknown goons. The police investigation of that case, which left the journalist in the hospital healing a slashed cheek similar to the wound inflicted on Jack Nicholson’s character in the movie Chinatown, has failed to find the persons responsible. Local reporters, who rushed to the site of the slashing, found a disorderly crime scene in the apartment building staircase, with both media people (photographers, cameramen, journalists) and nonchalant uniformed police trampling possible evidence.

As a sidelight, the independent Latvian weekly magazine Ir has been sued by four different allegedly “aggrieved” parties whose honor and reputation (or in one case, “traditional values”) have been injured by stories in the print and online publication. They must be doing something right.

Another needless flag-burning uproar

I am no fan of flag desecration, but however one may feel about it, it is a form of symbolic expression and is not punished as a crime in countries with a high degree of democracy and individual freedom, although there are Western countries that have laws on flag and national symbol desecration. They are not a good idea.
There has been another case in Latvia that has, yet again, caused a needless uproar. Someone was caught on a mobile phone camera attempting to burn or scorch a paper Latvian flag (not a protected flag under the law, if I am not mistaken). The incident happened on independence day, November 18. This triggered a frenzy of outrage, especially as the perpetrator appeared to be Russian. A girl responsible for filming and posting the incident was also reportedly threatened.
Now the Latvian Security Police – the same guys and girls who were arresting university lecturers just a few years ago for expressing opinions about the national currency – responding, apparently, to the outcry, have found the suspect and have launched a criminal investigation. As all that time and effort was being spent, I can imagine the members of some terrorist sleeper cell using Riga as a hideout laughing all the way to their safe house. This is the sort of thing, if anything, that the Security Police should be looking out for.
Can you imagine that, because they were looking for one fuckwit who should not be punished for what he did, the Security Police missed clues that the sleeper cell was using Latvia to prepare for an attack on an airport or city in western Europe? Sorry, missed that because we were hunting for a teenager who burned a red-white-red paper pennant.
Also disturbing, but perhaps not that different from a redneck response in the US, was the torrent of foaming at the mouth commentary asking that the flag scorcher (you don't really see it completely burn in the video) be deported, imprisoned, whipped, lynched, even summarily excuted (though that may have been black humor irony). It reinforces the evidence from polls and surveys that Latvian society is deeply authoritarian. That is dangerous. If for no other reason, flag and national symbol desecration laws, it is to stop what amounts to the legal and enforcable “sanctification” of property and symbolic objects to make it clear that the state stands above and can repress individuals for disrespecting it.

At least the US Supreme Court still understands the essence of the problem:

The Government may not prohibit the verbal or nonverbal expression of an idea merely because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable, even where our flag is involved. Nor may a State foster its own view of the flag by prohibiting expressive conduct relating to it, since the Government may not permit designated symbols to be used to communicate a limited set of messages. Moreover, this Court will not create an exception to these principles protected by the First Amendment for the American flag alone.

From Texas v. Johnson - 491 U.S. 397 (1989)

Perhaps the Latvian courts and the courts of a few other countries claiming to be democratic could look to this example?

Bad, stupid moves on free speech in Latvia

It has been a bad couple of days for free expression in Latvia. I will rank the cases starting with the one I consider the most brutal (and brutishly dumb) – the nursing home Gauja in the town of Garkalne that expelled Anita Arikāne, a 41-year old woman patient suffering from severe cerebral palsy for a blog she typed by holding a toothbrush or other object in her mouth.

The management of the nursing home said that the blog, published on the Latvian social network draugiem.lv was offensive to the staff and management of Gauja. After a cursory look at Anita's blog (it is rather chaotically organized and difficult to follow) I found nothing directly insulting to the nursing home. That does not mean there was no criticism, I just did not see anything that could be considered libelous – no untrue allegations of physical abuse, negligence or neglect. To be sure, Anita appears profoundly disabled and in need of constant care, something that would be extremely frustrating for even a few weeks, never mind a lifetime. Moreover, caregivers in Latvian nursing homes are underpaid and overworked – or, at least, that is a reasonable assumption. So some friction between the staff and a patient seen as privileged (Anita got her own room and an internet connection) could well have occurred. But to evict a disabled patient effective November 1, with apparently no process of adjudication, appeal or mediation seems the height of brutish cruelty and an abuse of Anita Arikāne's inalienable right to free expression. 

While we are on the subject of dumb behavior by country bumpkin municipalities (that may not be the right term for a coastal town in Latvia), it brings us to a refusal by the town of Salacgriva (which hosts the Positivus music festival in the summer) to allow a group of Latvian atheists to put up a poster that said “ You don't believe in God? You are not alone!” . The refusal was based on the argument that asking people to contact the Latvian Atheist Society was not a commercial advertisement for goods or services covered by municipal regulations pertaining to permits to post commercial bills on public property (lighting poles). As the Atheist Society points out, this was a contrived excuse to refuse to display an “anti-religious” message.

Not to be outdone by their opponents in Salacgriva (in terms of doing something off-the-wall), the atheists whose right to free expression was violated are now asking the Riga municipal building department (seems the municipal agencies that hand out building permits also give permits to put up posters) to remove a religious poster “Life without God, Life without meaning” that has been put up in Riga. Asking for symmetric violation of free expression probably is not the best tactic for resolving this matter,

Back in the big city, Riga mayor Nils Ušakovs (Harmony Center/SC) has decided to file suit against the independent magazine Ir and its commentator Aivars Ozoliņš for libel for a commentary in which he referred to the Riga municipal government as a “kleptocracy”. Ušakovs joins a not so short list of thin-skinned Latvian politicians who have reacted to harsh criticism by taking an axe to freedom of speech. And they have picked the wrong guy. Ozoliņš has been sued by politicians before – successfully as far as the post-Soviet mentality Latvian courts go, but he won a free speech case in the European Court of Human Rights in 2007 (for a case back in the 1990s), getting a judgement for some EUR 10 000 plus court costs. So here we go again...

Finally, I don't know what to make of the Latvian President Andris Bērziņš initiative to amend Latvian laws to impose harsher punishments on “disrespecting” Latvia's coat of arms and the coats of arms of Latvia's traditional districts – Kurzeme, Vidzeme, Zemgale and Latgale. Bērzīņš has proposed that fines for “disrespecting” these symbols should be as high as LVL 500. However, part of the problem here could be murky journalism – reading the LETA agency report more closely, it seems that the President was not addressing the issue of using the coats of arms “disrespectfully” in political expression, but rather what he considers their misuse for commercial purposes. This may well be a different story of setting rules for the use of national heraldic symbols on T-shirts and coffee cups (assuming that the government holds some kind of copyright in these coats of arms). Then again, it is a gray area as to whether using Latvia's coat of arms in a protest T-shirt or poster could be considered a violation of these laws. Any laws aimed at protecting the national and regional coats of arms from ending up on cheap vodka bottles should be written very carefully to ensure that they cannot be abused or used to chill free expression.