Education reform in Latvia caused huge teens protests
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It's hot in Latvia now. No, I'm not talking of weather -- our life is burning. It's known for many years that people may excuse to a government many things but what authorities should never do is to touch people property and children. Ours did the the latter...
On Feb 5, 2004 Latvian parliament, guided by xenophobic ambitions, has accepted a law limiting education in Russian language by a maximum of 40% of a total volume, not counting classes like Latvian language, history, literature and culture. In practice this means no more than 20% at the very beginning and as the matter of fact in the nearest future Russians in Latvia will not be able to get education in their native language at all.
Well, so why we say "xenophobia"? Everyone knows, most of countries around the globe provide education in their national languages only. Yes indeed, but there is a difference. Russians are not guests in Latvia; we were here for ages, long before Latvian independence, and we're 40% of population. Education in Russian existed in Latvia at all times, it has long and prosper history. So 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 years.
They claim to know what's needed for Russians better than they do themselves. "We want your children to know Latvian better than now to be competitive," they say. We know that's a lie. Should they really want this to happen, the best way is to invest in better 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 changes and only few fanatics are against. That's another lie. The reason why this page exists is to show to everyone what we really think of that. In the day when the law was accepted 15 to 20 thousands of Russian school children came to the parliament hall to express their will. A clip showing that is here; look at it. One should be mad or shameless to say those kids want this reform.
Children shouted "No to the reform!" and "Hands off from our schools!" non-stop for 3 hours but nobody noticed that. Just in couple of hours after the meeting finish, the law was accepted. The manifestation spent about half an hour near President's Castle; next day she said she were too busy working and therefore not aware of what's happening...
We still have some time. In two weeks the President of Latvia must either sign or return the law. Next meeting is scheduled on Feb 11 near President's Castle; we expect 30,000 people there. I bet this isn't enough though. She will accept the law, so the story is to continue. We're going to stop this craziness and we will.
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information please contact:
Andrew
+371 9643036
shtab@direct.lv
