FIDH Latvian Human Rights Committee

CLSFLatvijas Cilvēktiesību komiteja

FIDH Latvian Human Rights Committee

МФПЛ Латвийский комитет по правам человека

Reg. No. 40008010632, address: 102a-4, Dzirnavu str. Riga, LV-1050, Latvia. Tel. +371 26420477

4 March 2016, Riga

To: OSCE representative on freedom of the media

Ms Dunja Mijatović

Dear Ms Mijatović,

Over the last year, a series of events has caused concerns related to freedom of media in Latvia. The tensions between the EU and Russia are being used as a pretext for such actions, applied mainly to Russian-language media or media based in Russia.

On May 12, 2015, web portal Zarya.lv, founded by several opposition activists, was refused registration as a media outlet. In its reasoning, the Register of Enterprises has claimed that the declared aim to resist “any language supremacy” is contrary to the constitutional provision on the status of Latvian as the sole official language.[1]The portal continues to function, but its rights are restricted in comparison with registered outlets.

On August 27, 2015, the Register of Enterprises has refused to register a representative office of the Russian news agency Rossiya segodnya.On October, 22, the refusal was confirmed by the head of the Register of Enterprises.[2]There is some strange reasoning in this decision, including the claims that “in the view of the authors of the Social IntegrationPolicy, the content of Russia's media, as a whole, negatively influencesthe cohesion of Latvia's society. Taking into account theaforementioned, there is a possibility that the Russian Federation willattempt to distribute in Latvia information deceiving Latvia's society andable to lead to splitting Latvia's society, through the Agency'srepresentative office. Therefore, registering Agency's representativeoffice might pose a threat to Latvia's national security interests"(para. 14) and "In the present case the now-contested decisiondoes not limit the rights of the Agency as a media outlet to distributeinformation or to censor it in any way. Also, the now-contested decisiondoes not express a position that some opinion is right or wrong. Thus,there is no reason to consider that the now-contested decision limits therights of the Agency as a media outlet to express opinion, or thatinformation expressed by the Agency gets censored. To be specific, theexplanatory internet-dictionary explains the word "censorship" as "aprohibition by authorities to reproduce and distribute information theyconsider to be undesirable". The now-contested decision doesnot prohibit the Agency as a media outlet to reproduce and distributeinformation, but refuses to register a representative office of theAgency, because it does not fall under essence of a representative officeand its registration could create international sanctions against Latvia,as well as to create threats to national security" (para. 15).

Journalists Andrejs Solopenko (journal Baltiyskiy mir, published in Estonia with sponsorship from Russia) and Janis Kuzins (Latvian newspaper Gazeta PIK) have been denied accreditation, without clear reasoning, respectively, during the EU summit in Riga in May 2015[3] and by Parliament and the State Chancery in November 2015.[4]After the latter case was made public, Mr Kuzins has been given accreditation.[5]

Disclosure – over the last few years, some comments by LHRC members were published both by Baltiyskiy mir, Zarya.lv and we were interviewed bySputnik (related to Rossya Segodnya), mostly on issues related to the rights of Russian-speaking minorities in Latvia.

More recently, on February, 26, 2016, the Kurzeme district court of Riga has convicted Mr Maksims Koptelovs for publishing a joke petition[6] calling for Latvia to join Russia. The punishment is six months of jail. The very text of his petition references that it is a joke, and does not call for any violent activities.

Interestingly, the Latvian state-owned media website fails to report that the petition was in its own text designated as a joke[7]. This was, however, mentioned by many outlets coverring the judgment: both those from Czech Republic[8] and local ones,[9] including meduza.io, founded by liberalémigrés fromRussia.[10]

The provision applied is Paragraph 1 of Section 82 of the Criminal Law, which reads: “For a person who commits public invitation of destruction of the independence of the Republic of Latvia as a state, with purpose of incorporating Latvia into a unified state structure with some other state, or destruction thereof in some other way,the applicable punishment is deprivation of liberty for a term up to three years or temporary deprivation of liberty, or community service, or a fine, with or without probationary supervision for a term up to three years”.[11]

Interestingly, there had been reports of another joke petition earlier, calling upon Sweden to occupy Latvia. To the best of our knowledge, no prosecution has followed.[12]There have also been public calls to transform the EU into a federal state from an influential politician – then, the police had rightly refused to consider such calls as a crime.[13]

We consider that the conviction of Mr Koptelovs is contrary to Article 10 of ECHR and Article 19 of ICCPR. In particular, the case reminds the issues at stake in Strasbourg cases Özgür Gündem v. Turkey, no. 23144/93, Stankov and the United Macedonian Organisation Ilinden v. Bulgaria, nos. 29221/95 and 29225/95, Piermont v. France,nos. 15773/89 and 15774/89.The conviction has also been criticised by S&D group in the European Parliament.[14]

Most recently, on 3 March, the Parliament of Latvia has adopted in the first reading a pack of amendments for the Criminal Law. They intend to criminalise vague “actions against sovereignty of Latvia” and “aiding a foreign country in activities against security of Latvia”. The chair of the parliamentary National Security Commission supports the amendments by the notions of “hybrid war” and “information warfare”[15], so the amendments obviously concern the dissemination of information, first and foremost.

We hope you could find an opportunity to raise those issues before it is too late – in particular, before the court of appeals will hear Koptelovs’ case and before the amendments are adopted in the final (third) reading.

Yours sincerely,Aleksandrs Kuzmins

secretary-executive

[1] (RU)

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5] (LV)

[6]

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[8]

[9]

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[14] (EN)

[15] (LV) See also (RU) and the bill itself, annotated (LV)