Turning up the repression in many ways

I haven't had the time or energy to post, although I should have. The country continues to ease toward a crypto police state. Just a few incidents as examples.
During Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov's visit to Riga, a number of deputies of the pro-Russian, left-leaning For Human Rights in a Unified Latvia (Latvian= PCTVL) picketed near the Riga City Council building, not against Luzhkov, but to demand that a street named after the deceased Chechen leader Dzhokar Dudajev be renamed. They were dispersed by the police, some taken home under compulsion.
You can have more than mixed feelings about the PCTVL, but they have a right to free speech and assembly like anyone else, and to use police force in a discretionary manner against a peaceful, "spontaneous" and technically "illegal" assembly just shows where the country is going.
Another sight, that would seem to have little to do with free speech, is the presence of joint police and Riga traffic wardens (the people who catch and fine fare jumpers) on the streets at night. These operations, to nab a few persons who have stolen 70 santims (or $ 1,40) worth of services look intimidating. The whole crew of burly police in bright green-yellow fluorescent vests and sometimes burly wardens standing around one or two people who have failed to pay or whose electronic tickets expired simply says " police state" to me and other passers-by.  Is this the most serious kind of crime in Riga at the moment? With bike thieves rampaging and other petty crimes with real victims (not the revenues of the Riga transport organization Rīgas Satiksme), is this what the police should be doing?
I do see a similarity with the dispersal of the spontaneous PCTVL protest, because the sometimes brutal and unfair actions of the traffic wardens have and will trigger spontaneous protests by other passengers. Children have been thrown off public transport at night,  tourists who misunderstood how to pay or use tickets have also been taken off the bus from the airport, their first contract with Latvia. There have been incidents of resistance -- verbal and otherwise -- to this behavior by some wardens. At the same time, there have been cases of unprovoked and disproportionate abusive behavior and even violence by fare jumpers, so there is sometimes reason to have the police nearby, but why these nightly shows of force and intimidation? Seems to me the message is -- if you see repression, brutality, unfairness - don't you dare protest, resist or rise up. 
Finally, there was a case of two men running a professional marijuana farm in the countryside getting 12 and 8 year jail sentences. I decided to Twitter in Latvian that this was outrageous, because such sentences are disproportionate for what is essentially a victimless crime. I was assailed on another news site, along with those who expressed sympathy for my views, as being an advocate of drug use, which I am not.  A few commentators suggested that even to debate such matters -- the scientific basis for calling marijuana growers "merchants of death" (a possible lethal dose starts at 10 kg of active ingredient THC in one sitting) and the folly of a hysteria-driven, repressive drug policy-- was something that should be repressed or punished.
Unfortunately, these commentators, as representatives of public sentiment, indicate that what a large part of the Latvian population wants is to be ignorant, scared, and to not only live in an increasingly repressive society, but to actually cheer it on.

Latvian right-wing extremist gets two year suspended sentence for hate speech

Valdis Rošāns, a self-proclaimed Latvian right-wing extremist charged with hate-speech  writings on the internet (including comments on a Latvian-language libertarian blog that I wrote), was given a two-year suspended sentence by a Latvian court on August 18.
Rošāns published remarks that were allegedly demeaning to Jews, gays and other minorities. He claims his internet comments were reported to the authorities by Dialogi.lv, an organization dedicated to tolerance and, among other things,  to diminishing hate and abusive behavior on the internet.
While these are admirable aims, I believe Latvia and other European countries should adhere to the broadest possible interpretation of free expression. Repulsive as some of the tbings Rošāns has written may have been, they should not be grounds for imprisonment, suspended or otherwise.
Supporters of free speech such as Article 19 have argued against hate speech laws. They are counterproductive and dangerous, giving the power to chill or even censor free debate and expression. Repressing people like Rošāns not only violates his right to free expression, it also, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out, violates my right to be exposed to all kinds of expression and allowing me, not the state, to decide what I will or will not listen to or read.

Did Sweden's Bonnier Group inadvertently pump cash into Latvian political faction's black war chest?

I have written this as a "dream" on my Latvian language blog, but in fact it is credible version of what may have happened in the controversial divestment by  Sweden's  Bonnier Group of the Latvian media group AS Diena and the business newspaper Dienas bizness (my employer for 11 years up to 2006).
The version I have heard is as follows:

By early 2009, Bonnier realized that its newspapers in Latvia had been loss-making for some years and it had to decide how to stop the losses. There were a few options. First, to declare the newspapers bankrupt. This could be a dragged out process and perhaps would require a restructuring of the Diena group to separate out some profitable and potentially profitable parts. It would also cause some bad PR for Bonnier, who came into the Latvian market in the early 1990s under the banner of bringing a free, independent press to the post-Soviet country;

Another, similar alternative would be to close the newspapers. This (also probably the bankruptcy proceedings) would require dismissing the entire staff, paying severance pay, etc. There would also be bad PR.

The third possibility was to divest the newspapers. However, with at least Diena making serious losses (both papers lost a total of LVL 2.7 million in 2009), it was unlikely to get a buyer for any reasonable price. Also, it didn't look like the media market in Latvia would recover in the foreseeable future with the country in the midst of a very severe recession.

It was then, according to a version I have heard, that the Bonnier Group decided to use a means of divestment that may have been used when the Swedish Social Democratic media group A-Pressen fell apart in the early 1990s. Then, in order to divest unprofitable regional and small-town newspapers, A-Pressen made some deals in which the "buyer" was actually paid to take over the asset. In other words, there was reimbursement for at least the first year of predictable losses that the paper would make.

For the "buyer", this meant little or no cash out of pocket  and vastly reduced risk, at least for a while. The method is said to have also been used in non-media related transactions, for instance, filling the cash on hand of a company, then "selling" it for a roughlt equivalent sum.

Of course, I may have some of this wrong, there is some huge Swedish government study of the A-Pressen case I have yet to read. But should this version be reasonably accurate, it means that the "buyers"  of Diena and Dienas bizness were compensated with a pretty good sum, that the Bonnier Group could show as an expense, not further losses from its Latvian subsidiaries.

To make a long story short, after the initial "sale" of the newspapers to a company founded by former Diena executive Aleksandrs Tralmaks, it appears that ownership of the newspapers came into the hands of the British Rowland family, who had little or no previous contacts with Latvia and with investments in media. There is consensus among observers in Latvia that the Rowlands were probably a front for political interests in Latvia, most likely the party alliance between oligarchs Andris Šķele and Ainars Šlesers, with Ventspils mayor and accused money-launderer Aivars Lembergs also probably involved.

Once the reimbursement for taking the two newspapers off the Bonnier Group's hands passed through the Rowlands (with some fee deducted), it may have found its way into the black (underground) or grey (hidden influencers, support organizations) war chests of the oligarchs.

It now appears to have turned up again in the latest bizarre twist in the decline and fall of both formerly Swedish-owned newspapers. On August 5, the Diena group announced that 51 % of its shares had been purchased by Viesturs Koziols, a Latvian entrepreneur, friend and former business associate of Ainārs Šlesers.  Koziols said he had bought the shares with his own money, but also said he had no vision of how to develop the media group and bring it back to profitability.

If there is a Mrs. Koziols or other significant other, I would imagine that Viesturs would face her wrath for blowing a significant part of the family fortune on a loss-making, seemingly hopeless investment (hopeless if you have no idea what to do with your "purchase"). Koziols is listed as a Latvian millionaire and he didn't get to be that by being a foolish investor.

This leads one to believe that perhaps Koziols is spending a part of the money paid " through" the Rowlands from the Bonnier Group. Which is not to say, by any means, that the Bonniers intended for any of this to happen, nor that they can be held responsible, anymore than I can be blamed for spending a 20 lat bill that passes through a number of people and is, say, spent to buy liquor for an underaged alcoholic.

Circumstances strongly suggest that Koziols investment in Diena is a "risk-free" project since it is money entrusted to him, with sole purpose of keeping the weakened and discredited media group alive and inactive politically until after the October 2 parliamentary elections. Then it may be allowed to go under by the New Year, just as another Koziols media project, Republika.lv, did before and after the 2006 elections (I have no content analysis, but others say it was a short-term, election year project).

Indeed, there may have been no actual transfer of funds, merely a shift of front men from 100 % Rowlands (with people still WTF'ing their presence) to 51 % for a local boy with at least some entrepreneurial credibility. One sign that no new money is coming into Diena is that journalists are not being paid their per-item honoria any more, just basic (as little as LVL 180) salaries. Since the Latvian media job market is very limited and depressed, this will not set off a stampede away from Diena, but will very seriously demoralize the already confused and demoralized reporting staff.

What does this have to do with freedom of expression in Latvia? It is not directly on point, there is no state authority repressing the media. However, there are political interests undermining the quality and independence of the press. These political forces, especially the First Party of Ainārs Šlesers, are homophobic and have a hidden authoritarian agenda. There will be less freedom of the press, a kind of Russia Lite, if these political forces win. So, ultimately, it is a freedom of expression issue.

Latvia puts anti-repression protest organizer on trial

CORRECTION:
It seems Janis Kuzins organized a second protest on May 13 near the Latvian Prosecutor's Office, a few hours after the chalk action. The organizer of that protest at the Cabinet of Ministers is also being charged.


The Riga Center district court will hear an administrative misdemeanor case on Monday, August 2 against Janis Kuzins, an organizer of a spontaneous protest in front of the Latvian Cabinet of Ministers (government house) against the arrest of cyberactivist Ilmars Poikans and the police search of the home of Ilze Nagla, a Latvian television reporter.  She broke the story of Poikans' whistleblowing (revealing state and local government salary excesses based on State Revenue Service obtained through a security "hole" in a data base) under the name "Neo".
The protest in May was peaceful and involved up to 100 people using chalk to write protest slogans on the sidewalk in front of the government building in downtown Riga. The action was filmed by television and Nagla, one of the victims of police repression, attended the protest.
There was a second protest  somewhat later at the Latvian Prosecutor's Office.
While technically illegal, the protest did no harm to property or public order and the chalk was scrubbed away in a few hours. The charges against Kuzins, who could face up to 15 days in jail or a fine of 250 lats (almost 500 USD), have been brought in an effort to put a chilling effect on spontaneous protest in Latvia.

Latvia: Moving toward a "police state lite?"

I'm putting some pieces together, maybe too few, maybe not enough, but it is looking more and more like Latvia is drifting toward becoming a “police state lite”. Let's look at what has happened in recent weeks.

A court lifted a ban by the Riga city authorities on holding a march and flower-laying event on July 1 to commemorate the “liberation” of Riga from Soviet occupation in 1941 when Germany invaded the USSR. When one of the official organizers of the march, Uldis Freimanis, an activist for fringe causes, failed to show up for the event because he was summoned for questioning by the Security Police, the “regular” municipal and national police had a technicality on which to stop the march by some few tens of individuals. The main organizer was not present! One police force “helped” the other police to ban free expression that had been correctly sanctioned by a Latvian court.

Just to set the record straight as to where I stand.This march was a dubious undertaking, to say the least, since the Nazis were hardly interested in restoring an independent, democratic Latvia, but simply making the nation part of Ostland, a province of Hitler's empire. The Latvians were considered racially a few levels below the Aryan Germans, while Jewish Latvian citizens and any European (often Austrian) Jews, to whom Latvia had given refuge in the late 1930s were rounded up for extermination.

When Hitler started running short of cannon fodder, the German occupation regime in Latvia started drafting or otherwise strongly urging young Latvians to “volunteer” for two Waffen SS divisions formed to fight on the Eastern Front. The so-called Latvian Legion suffered enormous casualties. The formation of the Legion was, in effect, its own punishment for those who want to look at things in these terms.

However misguided, ignorant or simply pro-Nazi the organizers of the planned July 1 march were, they were correctly granted the right to express their views (and freedom of speech is tested by the expression of offensive views, not by public rallies to praise how blue the sky is or how fine it is that summer is warm). The police, it almost seems, conspired to prevent that free expression and even made a few arrests on July 1. Free expression, backed by a court, lost out to the police.

At almost the same time, the Security Police brought criminal charges against the author of an article in the Russian language portal gorod.lv, which is based in Daugavpils, for suggesting that the deportations and repression by the Soviet occupation authorities on June 13-14, 1941 was not harsh enough. For me, this is personal, since my grandfather, Andrejs Zeidaks and his family, were on the list of those to be deported in a later action (precluded by the arrival of the German army). However, this is not sufficient reason for me to celebrate anything other than my grandfather being saved by historical chance, nor to ask that freedom of expression be limited in Latvia. The crackpot author of the offensive gorod.lv article should be protected by the right to free speech, period!

Finally, there is the case, documented by the police's own video, of the Latvian theater and film director Viesturs Kairišs going home with his wife and a family friend/professional colleague after a night in the bars of the Old Town. Suffice it to say that Kairišs was not stone cold sober and was calmly walking with both ladies on his arms (this can be seen on the video). He apparently joked with a police patrol about getting a ride home, and this led to both him and a foreign opera singer getting arrested (the latter scuffling with police).

Even the police video shows that they were not dealing with aggressive, bellowing, stumbling, disoriented drunks (of which there sometimes is no lack in Old Riga as the night turns to early morning). The arrest of Kairišs and his companion (his wife was left alone) was a case of poor, perhaps malicious use of police discretion (if the police acted on every technical violation of the law, there would be hundreds of thousands of people in Latvia's jails). The cops simply didn't appreciate the man's sense of humor and punished him for it.

These incidents suggest to me that Latvia is continuing to move toward (or already is, with many unreported and unpublicized incidents) a “police state lite”. The most disturbing trend is in the repression of free speech that started with summoning a old lady who wrote an angry letter to then prime minister Aigars Kalvitis to the Security Police, followed by the detention of an economics lecturer from Ventspils, Dmitrijs Smirnovs, for published remarks about the stability of the national currency and the banking system (aren't those part of the economy and economists are, like, trained to comment and analyze the economy?).

I'm writing this post while in the US for a few days more (the land of the First Amendment, but not without problems of its own), so I may not be up on all of the details of what has been happening in Latvia since June 20, when I flew over here. But I think you don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows...

Call off your censors, Riga Mayor Nils Ušakovs!

Free speech and assembly are more or less absolute and inviolable rights. At least I believe so and so has the US Supreme Court. Free speech is not freedom for nice speech or politically correct speech, because as soon as we start talking in these terms, as to what speech or expression should be allowed or forbidden, we are moving into the censor's territory. There should be no censors, period. The best argument for this is that no one has the right to tell you or me what I may read, hear or see. That includes preventing me and others from being aware that some people want to commemorate, if not celebrate the occupation of Latvia by the German army on July 1, 1941.

Certainly, the arrival of Hitler's armed forces cut short a period of brutal Soviet rule and started a new period of repression and betrayal of the hopes of the Latvian population in general and genocide against Jewish Latvians in particular. Latvia' s Jews got the worst of both occupations – they were overrepresented among those 15 000 Latvian citizens deported on June 13-14, 1941 because of their class, education and perceived loyalty to the “bourgeois” Latvian state. They were exterminated by the German occupation forces on racial grounds.

It is probably fair to say that the second, Nazi occupation of Latvia took a greater number of Latvian citizens' lives than did the relatively short (cut short by the start of Operation Barbarossa) Soviet “Year of Dread” (Latvian: Baigais gads), at least in the period 1940 -1945. This is especially so if one counts the number of Latvians who were killed, crippled or driven into exile as a result of forced military service for Germany (the Latvian Waffen SS) Stalin' s repression and the deportations of 1949 indicated what would have happened years earlier had there been no German attack on the territories occupied by the USSR.

To call for a celebratory commemoration of the German invasion of Latvia in 1941 (briefly and bitterly misperceived as “liberation” at the time) with all of the historical hindsight of the present day is simply a crackpot enterprise. But free speech is there to protect crackpots, even ignorant or deliberately disgusting crackpots who bring needless scandal and disgrace to the whole country (international reports about “glorifying Nazism”).

Certainly, when it will be the 60^th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Latvia, there are grounds for a different kind of commemoration – one of historical reflection and closer examination of the much shorter occupation of 1941 – 1945 and its toxic effects to this very day. The place for this might be the Occupation Museum or a series of lectures and debates on the main questions surrounding July, 1941 at some other venue. The issue should not be swept under any rug.

Riga Mayor Nils Ušakovs has said that police will look for the tiniest sign of glorification of Nazism or the like in the July 1 flower-laying commemoration. This is a very disturbing thing to say. As at any controversial gathering, the role of the police should be preventing confrontations and disorder, it should never be to monitor the content of free expression by anyone exercising the right of free expression, no matter how offensive some may find that expression. If the Riga Municipal police can't take a joke from a mildly intoxicated theatrical director (Viesturs Kairišs) walking calmly home from a night of bar-hopping with his wife and another female friend, how can they be expected to apply any standard of “ethnic incitement”, “race hatred” or whatever? I am less worried about a gathering of wackos who are probably neo-Nazis (the Latvian Gustavs Celmiņš Society certainly is ideologically fascist, and its namesake, the Thundercross/Pērkoņķrusts leader Gustavs Celmiņš was actually arrested by the Nazis – no local competition accepted). I am more worried about the municipal government of Riga instructing the police to be censors. Let the loonies do as they please and send the Security Police (Drošības policija/DP) back to its cage.  

Latvian state language agency head denounces academic to Security Police

Based on media published excerpts of an interview by Sergejs Kruks, an academic researcher,  the head of the Latvian State Language Agency (Valsts valoda aģentūra/VVA)  Jānis Valdmanis, denounced the researcher to the Latvian Security Police, who summoned Kruks for questioning last week.
Kruks told the Latvian news agency BNS that his research indicated Latvians had to change or abandon some of their traditional values and give up the idea of preserving the country " as an open-air museum" where poets and artists can make a living and where national costumes, the language and traditions are preserved."
Valdmanis apparently interpreted this as a violation of laws against inciting ethnic hatred and asked the Security Police to investigate.
Kruks, an associate professor at the Riga Stradiņa university, is the second academic in recent years to be investigated by the Security Police for statements made to journalists and published in the media. Dmitrijs Smirnovs, a lecturer in economics at a college in Ventspils was arrested, taken to Security Police headquarters in Riga and held for two days after suggesting that people should not trust Latvian banks and the Latvian lat at a round-table discussion published in a local newspaper.

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