<div dir="ltr"><h1 itemprop="name" class=""><span>Latvian</span> <span>President</span> <span>Rejects</span> <span>Commission's</span> <span>Call</span> <span>to</span> <span>Stop</span> <span>Speaking</span> <span>Russian</span></h1><div class=""><span><a>
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Sputnik/ Oksana Dzhadan</a></span></div><div class=""><div class=""><div class=""><div class=""><a class="" href="http://sputniknews.com/europe/" itemprop="articleSection">Europe</a><div class="">17:56 20.07.2015(updated 22:30 20.07.2015) <span id="getShortUrl" class="">Get short URL</span></div><div class=""><a href="http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150720/1024837759.html#comments" class="">2</a><span class="">1867</span><span class="">34</span><span class="">2</span></div></div><strong itemprop="description" class="">Latvian
President Raimonds Vejonis has rejected the State Language Commission's
demand that he stop speaking in Russian, a move which was praised by
the country's Russian minority.</strong><div itemprop="articleBody" class=""><div class=""><div class=""><img src="http://cdn4.img.sputniknews.com/images/102478/71/1024787115.jpg" alt="Fish for sale in Riga" title="Fish for sale in Riga" height="375" width="705"></div><div class=""><a href="https://flic.kr/p/cX6qob">
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Flickr/ Stephen Bugno</a></div><div class=""><a href="http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150718/1024787156.html">Latvia Hopes for Fish Exports to Russia After Health and Safety Improvement</a></div></div>Last
week, State Language Commission head Andris Veisbergs strongly
recommended that the country's new president speak only in Latvian,
saying that he believed that "the opinion of the old commission and that
of the new one as well are the same: the president should communicate
to Latvian mass media only in Latvian."
<p>Vejonis, who took office earlier this month after being elected
to the presidency by the country's parliament last month, vowed that he
would continue to speak to press in the language "in which he was
addressed, provided that [he knows] the language." Since then, the
president has continued to address Russian-speaking journalists
in Russian, noting that after being brought up on Pushkin's fairy tales,
read to him by his Russian-born mother, he considers the language to be
his own.</p>
<p>Commenting on the president's position, Elena Matjakubova, the
chairwoman of the Latvian Society of Russian Culture, said that Vejonis
has demonstrated a humane position. </p>
<p class="">"The president has taken a humane and noble
stance by saying that he would not stop using the Russian language."
Matjakubova stated, according to Russia's RIA Novosti. "His mission is
to educate society," she added.</p>
<p>Vejonis's position on the Russian language is potentially important
because despite the fact that it is the primary language of over a third
of the country's population, it continues to be classified a foreign
language under the country's laws. Language policy is one of the ways
in which the Latvian state discriminates against its Russian-language
minority, which includes Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians whose
families came to the region after 1940. About 12 percent of the
country's population continues to hold 'non-citizenship passports'.
These people are unable to vote, unable to hold certain positions
in civil service and government, and subjected to limited pension
rights.</p>
<div class=""><div class=""><img src="http://cdn3.img.sputniknews.com/images/102289/21/1022892114.jpg" alt="Raimonds Vejonis" title="Raimonds Vejonis" height="375" width="705"></div><div class=""><a>
©
AFP 2015/ SAUL LOEB</a></div><div class=""><a href="http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150710/1024458410.html">Minority Report: Latvian President Admits Failures in Integrating Russians</a></div></div>In
an interview for popular online news site Delfi.lv last week, Vejonis
stated that his country had "made many mistakes" in integrating the
Russian speaking minority over the past two decades. The president noted
that as a result, "two [separate] information flows have resulted –one
in Latvian and one in Russian." He added that he would take it
upon himself to look for sources of "common ground, shared by all
inhabitants of Latvia."
<p>Narrowly chosen to replace outgoing president Andris Berzins earlier
this month, Vejonis became the first Green Party president in the
European Union. An environmental engineer by training, he was first
appointed Environment Minister in 2002, and later elected to the
country's parliament, the Saeima, in 2006. Between January 2014 and June
of this year he served as defense minister in the government of Prime
Minister Laimdota Straujuma.</p></div></div></div></div><div style="overflow:hidden;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:rgb(255,255,255);text-align:left;text-decoration:none;border:medium none"><br>Read more: <a style="color:rgb(0,51,153)" href="http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150720/1024837759.html#ixzz3gXQ94qUw">http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150720/1024837759.html#ixzz3gXQ94qUw</a><br><br><br></div><a href="http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150720/1024837759.html">http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150720/1024837759.html</a><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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