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Russia stresses minority rights during Jagland’s visit
It seems that as part of the issues “of mutual interest” which the Council of Europe’s (CoE) Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland intends to discuss during his visit to Russia, the topic of minority rights was chosen by his hosts as the one to put an emphasis on.
At his meeting with Jagland earlier today, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed the need for additional efforts in addressing the challenges to the rights of Russian minorities in Estonia and Latvia.
“We appreciate the work of the Secretariat of the Council of Europe in relation to the situation of national minorities in Europe,” said Lavrov and continued “For us, this is particularly important in view of the situation in which many Russian speaking people in Latvia and Estonia have been for years.”
According to latest available governmental data, as of 2011 there are around 1,071,572 ethnic Russians in the three Baltic States, their number being approximately 340 750 in Estonia and 556,430 in Latvia. The number of ethnic Russians in Lithuania has been estimated to be around 172,000.
As Joanna Hyndle-Hussein and Miryna Kutysz write in their article for the Polish Centre for Eastern Studies, Russian-speakers are a numerous minority in Latvia and Estonia “which causes deep division in these countries from the ethnical point of view”. According to the scholars, the problem of highest importance in the legal aspect is the unregulated status of the Russian-speakers in those two countries. Though they are permanent residents of Latvia and Estonia many of them still do not have these countries' citizenship.
The problem has recently exacerbated after last week the Russian and Latvian foreign ministries exchanged acute comments in relation to the newly adopted amendments to the Latvian law on citizenship. Russia claims that the changes are not in line with international recommendations and will worsen the situation of the stateless Russian-speaking minority in the country, especially by the lack of provision of an automatic citizenship to children of "non-citizens". According to the Latvians, however, the Russians are “deliberately attempting to deceive international community” because the new wording of the law improves the current regulation and simplifies the registration of non-citizens’ and stateless persons’ children as citizens.
As part of his visit to Russia, CoE’s Secretary General will hold talks also with Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov and the State Duma Chairman Sergey Naryshkin. It is still unclear how and whether the Council of Europe considers to respond to the Russian call for more efforts in addressing the challenges to the rights of Russian minorities in Estonia and Latvia.
Probably, the issue is not the main item in the agenda for Jagland’s visit either. On his way to Moscow, the secretary general was urged by non-governmental organisations to call on Russian leaders to end the what they name "crackdown on civil society groups."
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Originally Posted by Baluarte
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