Штаб защиты русских школ, официальный сайт
Штаб защиты русских школ, официальный сайтDanger: violence towards minorities in LatviaIt’s hot in Latvia now. No, it’s not of the weather – our life is burning. It’s known for many years that people may excuse governments for many things, but what authorities should never do is to touch people property or children. Ours did the latter…On Feb 5th, 2004 Latvian parliament, guided by xenophobic ambitions, finally accepted a law that limits education in Russian language by a maximum of 40% of a total volume, not counting course of Latvian language, and starting from 2007, all exams are to be passed in Latvian only. In practice this means ban of Russian language in Latvian schools in the nearest future. Well, why we say «xenophobia»? Everyone knows – the most of countries around the globe provide education in their national languages only. Yes indeed, but there is a difference. Russophones are not guests in Latvia; we were here for ages, long before Latvian independence, and we’re more than 40% of a population. Education in Russian existed in Latvia at all times, it has long and prosper history. Now the parliament didn’t vote against spending money to create a parallel system of education; they voted to spend us taxpayers’ money to destroy what was working for ages. They call that “education reform”…The authorities claim to know what Russians need better, than we do ourselves. «We want your children to know Latvian better than now to be competitive,» they say. We know it’s a lie. Should they really want this to happen, they should invest in good teaching of Latvian but they never did. One of the most well known deputies has said once: «We don’t want you to know Latvian; we want you to know your place». That’s what we call xenophobia.They say that the most of Russians accept the “reform” and only few fanatics are against. That’s another lie.In a day when the law was accepted, 15 to 20 thousands of Russian students came to the Parliament Hall to express their will. Children shouted “No reforms!” and “Hands off our schools!” non-stop during 3 hours, but nobody noticed that. Just in a few hours after the meeting was finished, the law was accepted.A few days later even greater manifestation appeared onto streets of Riga. Children came to a President’s Castle asking the President to reject the law. Everything was ready that winter day to make a square in front of President’s Castle a field of flowers, should we see that the President listens to people. We took care that she knew that intention; we gave her a great chance to unite the society, but she decided to miss it… The law had been signed and came into force.Afterwards protests continued non-stop; manifestations of thousands of people, 2-day precautionary schools strike, a huge meeting on May 1st with 65,000 people protecting, five days round the clock picket against Ministers’ Cabinet Hall and many more… One should be mad or shameless to say those people accept the “reform”, but nobody cares.Well, did we resign? No! If the government still ignores us, there won’t be classes in Russian schools of Latvia on September 1st. We, Staff of Russian School Defenders, a union of pupils, parents and few democratically thinking politicians, will start a schools strike that is going to last until “reform” cancellation. We call all goodwill people in the world to support us. We don’t want to miss opportunity of good education and will never accept violence. Whoever you are, be with us; we’re going to stop this craziness and we will.Staff of Russian School Defenders102a Dzirnavu St., Riga, Latviashtab@shtab.lv+371 9830130