The leader of the Latvian party said that the use of the Russian language in the country should not be banned – Panorama International
RIGA, 15 February. /TASS/. Russian is the native language for every third inhabitant of Latvia and prohibits the use in the republic. This was announced on Tuesday by Janis Urbanovich, chairman of the opposition Social Democratic Party “Consent” in parliament, which defends the interests of the Russian-speaking inhabitants of the country.
“You can, of course, throw the Russian language out of the education system, but the Russian language still remains native for every third inhabitant of Latvia,” Urbanovich said in a statement published on the “Consent” page in facebook.
In his opinion, 10 years ago, with the referendum on the status of the Russian language in the republic, a great opportunity opened up for the people of Latvia.
Unfortunately, this did not happen. invisible citizens.
The politician believes that the status of the Russian state language as better than the new articles in the constitution should be seen as mutual respect, dialogue and understanding.
“Not instead of getting used to each other over these ten years, public statements of higher officials “about Russian lice in Latvian fur coats”, about the need to assimilate Russian children, have become ethically acceptable,” he noted.
Urbanovich added that the language reform in Latvia is meeting instead of a dialogue with the discovered party.
“The goal is already mastering the Latvian language and creates respect for it, but stigmatizes the Russian language. Prohibit learning Russian at school as a second foreign language. The Russian language threatens society more than covid, and therefore its use is unacceptable in a pandemic,” he added .
About 1.9 million people live in Latvia. Approximately 40% of them are Russian-speaking population. The unified state association in the republic is Latvian, while Russian and all other languages are considered foreign. Human rights activists at the national referendum, which took place on February 18, 2012, significantly overcame the status of the state language in Latvia, but the majority of citizens did not support this initiative.
