Europe Features

A year after riots, Latvians debate what they achieved (News Feature)

By Mike Collier Jan 12, 2010, 10:44 GMT

Riga - The temperature in Riga on Tuesday was minus 16 Celsius, making the sight of someone lounging in a deck chair a stone's throw from the Latvian parliament building a bizarre one. Indeed, one year ago stones were literally being thrown from the same spot as on January 13, 2009, the worst civil unrest since the restoration of independence in 1991 exploded in the Latvian capital. Police fought running battles with rioters, cars were overturned and shops looted. The parliament was battered by paving stones ripped from the cobbled streets of Riga's medieval Old Town. A year on, the man in the deck chair is Noor Siders. He is staging a demonstration of a different kind, telling politicians to cut their own salaries as they have done with the pay of other public servants. 'I see the difference between the elite and the people getting bigger and bigger. They keep implementing more laws but just push people into unemployment,' he told the German Press Agency dpa. But Siders isn't one of the unemployed or homeless: 'I have everything, but I wanted to understand how it is to sleep on the street.' There has been no repetition of the January 13 violence but last year's events do seem to have created a new strain of civil protest in Latvia. A small tented village has been in place outside the cabinet office in Riga for a month as part of a protest demanding jobs in a country where unemployment has risen to more than 20 per cent. Despite the freezing temperatures and court orders telling them to pack up and move on, protestors say they have no intention of going anywhere. 'January 13 didn't change anything,' said one protestor who gave his name as Mihails. 'The same people are in charge and they only care about looking after big businesses and banks.' Despite the non-violent nature of the protests, the authorities are taking every precaution to ensure there is no repetition of the riot. 'The police have been on high alert for some time. On January 13 they will be everywhere to guarantee public security,' Interior Minister Linda Murniece said on Latvian Radio on January 11. Last year's unrest occurred as a peaceful demonstration involving 10,000 people dispersed after calling for political reform. The cause of the violence remains a matter of debate - was it a spontaneous eruption of frustration, as some people claim? Or was it just a glorified drunken brawl, as others contend? Member of European parliament Robert Zile, who heads the nationalist Fatherland and Freedom party insists the riot did not have any real effects even though the government of Ivars Godmanis collapsed a few weeks later. 'To my surprise after this hooliganism, President Zatlers came down hard on the Seima (Latvian parliament). I disagreed with him because it seemed he was sending the message that you have to do something similar to get results,' he told dpa. Zile is of the opinion that the riot was far from spontaneous and leans towards a popular theory that the hidden hand of Russia was involved. 'Of course I don't have any proof but I think it was provoked by special interest groups from our neighbourhood,' he said. A repeat performance this year is not likely, he thinks. A more likely target is the controversial March 16 commemoration of soldiers who fought on the German side during World War II, Zile believes, especially after British Foreign Secretary David Milliband said in 2009 the event made him feel 'sick.' However, according to social anthropologist Roberts Kilis, the January 13 riot was important, marking a change in the relationship between the political classes and the voters. 'After January 13 it became clear to everyone that Latvia's population does not trust the political system. January 13 demonstrated that people did not take the parliament seriously and treated it as an alien power,' Kilis told the Baltic News Service. Parliamentary speaker Gundars Daudze expressed a similar view on the LNT TV channel. 'We woke up to a rather different Latvia on January 14. I think we were surprised that the discontent of a certain parts of society in Latvia could be expressed in this way,' he said. Nevertheless one group does plans to stage an action on January 13. Environmental organization Projekts Pedas (Project Footprints) is urging Latvians to think positive thoughts for ten minutes at 9 am. 'Since last year, many associate January 13 with negative and destructive things. We want to counteract this trend,' said Metra Strode, a spokeswoman for the organization.