Latvian editor faces order to reveal sources in a closed court hearing

Edgars Kupčs, the deputy editor of a regional newspaper, Zemgales Ziņas, has been summoned to a closed court hearing at the Jelgava district court on December 4 to be ordered to reveal a source that gave him a public court transcript.  The transcript, in turn, is the basis for a criminal libel (yes, the kind where a journalist can be jailed fro what he or she wrote) case against Kupčs, who used the transcript to write about the allegedly shady dealings of a local attorney.

The attorney, Dzintars Lagzdiņš, has represented the Jelgava district local authority and a disputed article by Kupčs cited testimony by Lagzdiņš that seemed to support the journalist’s claim that the attorney, while on the public payroll, was providing information about public lands that could be available for purchase to a private businessman. This testimony was heard in open court and could have been reported by anyone.

Lagdziņš filed the criminal libel charges saying that his testimony, as lifted from a transcript of the open and public proceedings, was distorted to place him in a bad light and make allegations of unethical and corrupt behavior.

While Latvian law, like the legal systems of most countries, offers civil remedies for blatantly false publications and statements, the criminal libel law is seen as a blunt tool against the freedom of expression and a remnant of a Soviet/authoritarian mentality. It also carries a far stronger chilling effect than a civil lawsuit (which can, of course, in some contexts, be financially burdensome for journalists and publishing houses).

Another curious aspect of the case is that the demand to disclose the source of a transcript of open court testimony comes from a local police inspector who has reportedly expressed her conviction that Kupčs is guilty and that Lagdziņš is right to prosecute him. While she may hold that view, the police inspector seems to have ignored the absurdity of breaking a basic journalistic right to protect sources in order to reveal – not some damaging whistleblower – but merely someone who had a written version of what was said in open court. The source or sources did nothing wrong – unless there is another agenda to take revenge on them in addition to jailing and muzzling Kupčs.

This case should be on some kind of short list at Index on Censorship or Article 19, and perhaps the Committee to Protect Journalists (although Kupčs’ life is not being threatened by, say, some African militia). Latvian authorities, even in the  “provinces” must understand that they cannot violate fundamental media freedoms and the right to protect sources.  At least the Latvian Journalists’s Association has clearly stated that Kupčs must not reveal his sources. He should have the support of fellow journalists and editors around Europe and in the world.

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.

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.

Latvian Security Police backs away from being a NeoKGB

The Latvian Security Police seems to have backed off from being the "neo -KGB" that it was in 2008, when it arrested an economics lecturer and questioned a musician for making remarks about the banking system and the Latvian currency, the lat. That incident inspired me to start this blog.
Now it seems that the Security Police (Drošibas policija/DP) have refused to act on a request by National Alliance Saeima deputy Raivis Dzintars that the DP investigate statements by a teacher of Russian language and literature that he was " disloyal to Latvia, because the regime (meaning the government) was causing problems for his family."

The DP refused to act on Dzintars request saying that:  " A person's subjective attitude toward the state, including one that is negative, cannot be the basis for evaluating whether a criminal investigation should be started."

Let's hope this has killed any plans for using the DP as an unofficial "loyalty police" by the sometimes disturbingly authoritarian Nationalist Alliance.
While I don't believe the Security Police are yet a hotbed of libertarians, it will be difficult for them to back off from this stance and go back to acting as a chilling effect on political expression. Good stuff does happen here from time to time.

Latvia - A police state ultra-lite?

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.

Who let the dogs out - a clarification

To update and clarify my earlier post on the concerns I have about using a repressive police agency against some bad journalism, it was not the National Alliance Saeima deputy Jānis Dombrava who complained to the Security Police about coverage of the events of March 16 in a television news spot on the Russian language First Baltic Channel (PBK). Dombrava actually complained to the National Electronic Media Council (NEPLP, the Latvian abbreviation), which, in a sense, is the right place to go. It seems that the NEPLP then submitted the case to the Security Police - the agency that arrests economics lecturers for commenting on banks, the currency and the economy.
Dombrava explained his actions on Twitter but said he was pleased that the Security Police had taken the case. I find that worrisome, but I have set the facts straight as to how this case ended up in the hands of Latvia's neo-KGB lite. Sorry about the inaccuracy, Jānis.
Which brings me to the next point - should the NEPLP (or NEMC in English) be forging this kind of relationship with a repressive agency that has arrested and charged people for exercising free speech (which was clearly the case with the economist Dmitrijs Smirnovs in 2008)? The NEMC has its own means of censuring and administratively punishing the media. The Security Police should be kept as far as possible from any involvement in the content of electronic or other media. If anything, the case in question, where some anti-Semitic shouting on the soundtrack of a news spot was attributed or imputed, in the Russian translation, to the wrong person, merits this kind of censure or administrative action, at worst. There may also be a civil case by the man who was arguing (politely, with no anti-Semitic wording) with two representatives of the Anti-Fascist movement who were trying to restore the wreath they had laid (see the earlier post), since it was implied that he shouted "Jews do not belong here".  Not true, although someone did shout that and it would have been part of a story that, while the man, apparently representing the organizers of the Latvian Legion commemoration, was having a tense discussion with the Anti-Fascists, someone did shout something against Jews.
As for the NEMC, please use your own tools for settling matters with media distortions and inaccuracies. To use the Security Police is so post-Soviet. 

Latvian security police end investigation of incitement to desecrate the flag

The Latvian Security Police (Drošības policija) have ended an investigation surrounding calls on the internet for persons to desecrate the Latvian flag. The case has been ended because no "victim" of any crime was found (surprise, surprise!). Had anyone been found guilty of the actual crime of flag desecration, the perpetrator could face a stiff fine and up to three years imprisonment.
The call to desecrate the flag was published on the internet last year and contained a statement that any any "radical" advocate of free expression (say, like the US First Amendment) can only agree with:

In our view, any person, citizen or non-citizen, has the absolute right to do with the flag as he or she pleases. At the same time, the state has no right to punish a person for defacing, burning, tearing, or tramping the flag, The state must guarantee the right of persons to freely express their views. If a person has reason to take such actions with the flag, then he shall not even be deterred from such an action, nver mind punished.


For my Latvian readers:

"Mūsu skatījumā, jebkuram cilvēkam - pilsonim vai nepilsonim - ir absolūtas tiesības rīkoties ar karogu pēc saviem ieskatiem. Savukārt valstij nav absolūti nekādu tiesību cilvēku sodīt par to, ka viņš karogu izķēmo, dedzina, plēš, mīda kājām. Valstij ir jāgarantē cilvēka tiesības brīvi paust savus uzskatus. Ja kāds cilvēks uzskata, ka viņam ir pamats tā rīkoties ar karogu, tad viņu nedrīkst pat atturēt no šādas rīcības, kur nu vēl sodīt.

I fully agree with this statement, although I would never burn a Latvian flag. To me it represents, or should represent, the freedom that allows anyone else to do just that (the same goes for the US flag).

I would qualify the right to burn or desecrate a flag by saying -- desecrate a flag that is your property and don't create a significant public nuisance (setting something other than the flag on fire). Ripping down flags or national symbols that belong to public authorities or private persons is vandalism and should be punished with no greater severity than the damaging or destruction of any other, non-symbolic public property, such as a no-parking sign.

As for the Security Police, maybe they should avoid the chilling effect of investigations of this kind. As for the Saeima, it should repeal the laws that forbid flag desecration or give it any special status above and beyond the laws applicable to vandalism and destruction of public property. 

Latvia gets another badge for banana republic repression

Well, Latvia got what it was “working” for – a drop of 20 places to 50^th place in the world in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index. It was in “good” company, just three places behind the 47^th place United States, which has disgraced its own benchmark First Amendment press freedom protections by arresting journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in several cities.

Latvia earned its sharp drop, according to Reporters Without Borders, for two incidents this year – a raid by anti-corruption police on the newspaper Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze (NRA) and the detention, for 48 hours, of the editor of a website in Latvian which exposed what it claimed was suspcious e-mail correspondence between Riga mayor Nils Ušakovs and the Russian Embassy.

Unfortunately, I missed the NRA incident in this blog, or perhaps I thought that an investigation by the anti-corruption police (KNAB) was justified, since the newspaper is effectively controlled by Ventspils mayor, oligarch and accused money-laundered and economic criminal Aivars Lembergs. I may have been wrong.

In any event, if you scroll back through what I have posted during 2011, there is plenty of reason to consider the freedom of expression (not just the rights of journalists) to have been dragged down to the level of a black humor banana republic by several actions of the authorities. So this ranking is well deserved, though I am more worried about the decline of press freedom in the country where I grew up – the United States. I frequently refer to the clear language of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law...”. That, for me, sets the standard for freedom of the press and speech, and it is very disturbing that the US cannot live up to its own standards. What can one expect of Latvia.

Nonetheless, respecting the rights of journalists and the freedom of expression is a low cost enterprise. Just let them be. And it has been proven possible in a country with much the same historical experience and “post-Soviet” political culture as Latvia – it's neighbor to the north, Estonia, ranked number three in the press freedom index after Finland and Norway. Another lesson not learned by a country that seems to want a downward spiral into cheap-ass (no concentration camps, just petty and stupid repression) banana republic status. 

Another suspicious "hate speech" case in Latvia

It looks like Latvia has another "hate speech" case, with one Ingus Graudiņš getting a suspended sentence for writing anti-Russian comments on an unnamed internet website. According to media reports, Graudiņš was involved in some kind of scuffle with Russians on the street, then went off and wrote some kind of rant or a series of anti-Russian rants. Apparently strong, perhaps racist language was used, though none of the matter-of-fact reports I have seen quote anything that the accused wrote.
As a defender of free speech, I am against any and all hate speech laws. Speech is speech - you may dislike it, hate it, be enraged by it, but you should not empower the government to imprison people simply for what they say or write, no matter who it enrages, insults, or offends. Civil libel and slander cases are another thing, but even here I would tread very carefully, especially if public figures are involved. If you choose the limelight, well, realize that sometimes it can be a targeting beacon for shit.
The case of Graudiņš, on the facts that I know, looks like a selective political prosecution in order to have a chilling effect on discussion of ethnic issues ahead of referendum on making Russian a second state language that will be held in early 2012. Depraved racist ravings are regular, daily occurances on Latvian internet portals and there should be a line of hundreds outside the courts if all these comments were to be prosecuted. I searched but couldn't find (portal content shifts) a series of comments I saw to some news story earlier today blaming "the Jews" for whatever it was that  had happened. This is so commonplace, along with the lambasting of gays and advocating their imprisonment or extermination, that one regards it as part of the written background noise on the Latvian internet.
Certainly this does not reflect well on Latvian society, but ignorance, bigotry and folly can't be remedied by repressive police methods and the stifling of political debate, even if one or several of the many voice in the debate are raving and raging, rather than making arguments. Sad, but let's not fill prisons over it.
Another worrying thing is that we have had several outrages against free expression in this country, the latest being a police raid on an internet site kompromat.lv, but there has been absolutely no reaction, not even a two-sentence mention on the Index on Censorship website or its free speech blogs.  We had police arrest spontaneous demonstrators, we had an internet medium's office raided, editor detained for 48 hours, servers seized, and now a rather suspicious hate speech case. I informed Index about all of these. May I kindly ask Index on Censorship- why the fuck are you completely ignoring this?

More on the Latvian police action against a journalist

This is a chronology of events surrounding the arrest of Leonids Jakabsons, a journalist and editor of the investigative and whistle-blowing website kompromat.lv. 

Jakabsons has been released after being held the maximum 48 hours before a suspect must be brought before a judge and a case presented for further detention (a formal criminal investigation must be started or charges brought). It is pretty clear that this detention is a deliberate application of the chilling effect, as was done when Ilze Nagla, a Latvian television journalist, had her home searched and laptop seized after reporting on the activities of "Neo", a cyberactivist who leaked anonymized salary data from government and municipal institutions that he obtained by exploiting a "hole" in the State Revenue Service database. Later, when arrested, "Neo" was discovered to be Ilmārs Poikāns, an artificial intelligence researcher at the University of Latvia faculty of mathematics and computer science.

THE CHRONOLOGY

November 16, 2011. kompromat.lv publishes Riga Mayor Nils Usakovs correspondence with Alexander Hapilov of the Russian Embassy, a person suspected of spying

November 18, 2011 Ceaseless cyberattacks start against kompromat.lv and continue to the present.. 

November 21, 2011  kompromat.lv complains to the Cybercrime unit of the Economic Police, the responsible detective Aleksandrs Bebris shows no interest in the complaint/

November 22, 2011 After news appears on news portals about the cyberattacks on kompromat.lv, the Latvian IT security incident response unit CERT.LV contacts kompromat.lv and offers its assistance. CERT.LV examines log files, identifies the attacker and is prepared to participate in the case as a witness.

December 3, 2011, Detective Aleksandr Bebris announced that the Cybercrime unit has more important cases to investigate and no further investigation would be undertaken, even though the evidence submitted was more than sufficient to arrest those responsible.

December 14, 2011, Detective Aleksandrs Bebris asks kompromat.lv systems administrator Edmunds Zalitis to give a witness statement with regard to the cyber attack on kompromat.lv. Detective Bebris was particularly interested in the technical specifications of kompromat.lv’ s servers and whether there were backup copies, The detective also wanted access password, which, for security reasons, were not disclosed.

December 15, 2011 at 12:30 Cybercrimes unit detective Aleksandrs Bebris and three masked policemena around at the Riga World Trade Center and, using a sledge hammer, break into the office of an internet club. After an hour and a half, the police leave, taking along the kompromat.lv server , a server labeled “Backup” and two optical labeled Norton Systemworks 2005 (as could be determined from a bad quality carbon copy). The search and seizure had been requested by detective Nauris Liepins of the National Police, the search warrant was  approved by Judge Rinalds Silakalns. Aleksandrs Bebris and Peteris Reinfelds participated in the search.

At the same time, kompromat.lv journalist Leonid Jakabsons is arrested at his home and all data media found in his residence during a search are seized.

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THE LESSONS LEARNED:   Journalists in Latvia are operating in a latent crypto-authoritarian system where their freedom to work and the security of their working materials (digital or otherwise) can be violated at any time. To build better defenses, it is best to use cloud services and store or back-up notes and other confidential material in countries such as Iceland, Sweden, perhaps the US. Certainly any website like kompromat.lv should be hosted outside Latvia. Critical data should be encrypted at the cost of losing any media or computer it is on, while the authorities struggle to try to break in.