Is Latvia turning into a police state lite with a
creeping chilling effect on free expression and, perhaps, on free behavior in
general? There are some disturbing
signs. On August 20, private security guards detained, according to one
version, six persons who tried to collect signatures against the punishment
handed down to the Russian performance artists (for lack of a better word) Pussy Riot. Three women dressed
similarly to the Pussy Riot members and three men were detained outside the
Skonto Arena, where a concert was taken place. They were then turned over to
the “regular” policemen, who, after a while, told all those detained that they
had committed no violation and were free to go. Before that, some placards
carried by the women were taken away and, it seems, given back only when the
detainees left after the concert.
That, it seems, would have been the end of it, but now
the young women have been summoned by the police again, to be officially
informed that no charges will be brought against them. A strange formality to
say the least, and with an undertone of – we
are in control here, we tell you what to do. Nicely, of course, with even the official police spokesperson
saying that calling the girls to the police station was a courteous gesture
that shouldn’t be misunderstood.
There was more before that. Activist Didzis Melbiksis,
who has also been a radio journalist, organized a parody march just ahead of
the Riga Pride in June, in which he and several other persons (all of them, by
the way, supporters of gay rights) carried a large symbolic phallus from near
the Freedom Monument to a nearby club. The march had been announced and
permitted by the authorities. Nonetheless, the Riga Municipal Police chose to
question Melbiksis and other participants, ask them for identification and the
like.
Last fall, just after the extraordinary elections to the
parliament or Saeima, Three
persons spontaneously protesting against the actions of a political party and
three bystanders were detained by Latvian police in the capital Riga on October
5 and taken to a police station for "identification". There they had
a sign written on a sheet and a t-shirt with a slogan on it confiscated.
According to media reports, the police gave no reason for confiscating the items,
one of which was a sheet with a slogan labeling former Latvian president Valdis
Zatlers "a traitor" and the t-shirt with a handwritten slogan
"Zatlers, have you no shame?" in Latvian.
So-called
administrative charges were filed against all six persons detained in
connection with the protest and they could have faced jail term of up to 15 days
and fines of up to LVL 25. To be honest, I don’t know how this case ended, but
it was yet another case of police repression against spontaneous, non-violent
political expression. The same as what the private security guards, perhaps
with a tad more basis in law (a “private” public space) for restricting the
behavior of people near a large event, did to the Pussy Riot petitioners.
What
this is beginning to add up to is that Latvia is, and perhaps always has been,
a kind of police state lite or even ultralite , but just heavy enough to have the chilling effect on
spontaneous expression protest that, at least back in the day, the US Supreme
Court, would use as an argument for knocking down laws, ordinances and police
actions that had precisely that kind of chilling effect on free speech that the
actions of Latvian police have had.
Given
the general undercurrent of indifference toward or even agreement with the way Pussy Riot has been treated in Russia,
it is no surprise that certain forms of repression are accepted as normal in
Latvia. Indeed, given the widespread mentality of if I don’t like it, I don’t care if it is repressed it is
surprising that the police don’t take more advantage of the latitude that
society gives them. Perhaps some
of the police – the younger, better educated ones – have acquired the skills of
modern, Western-style policing. That would be a good sign. But it would be
still better if society actually cared about these issues, or if, at least,
there was a militant pro-free expression movement. But both of these
developments are highly unlikely in the foreseeable future.
