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ENLARGE
Ethnic Russians staged a counterprotest during an event in Riga in 2013 commemorating World War II veterans who fought in a Latvian legion that was part of the Waffen SS.
Photo:
European Pressphoto Agency
By
Juris Kaža and
David Gauthier-Villars
David Gauthier-Villars
The Wall Street Journal
CANCEL
- Biography
- @gauthiervillars
- David.Gauthier-Villars@wsj.com
Aug. 26, 2016 5:25 p.m. ET
RIGA, Latvia—In this former Soviet republic, two ostensibly tongue-in-cheek challenges to the nation’s independence are causing trouble for the authors—and raising concerns about civil rights.
Days after Deniss Barteckis posted an online petition calling for Latvia to join the U.S. last spring, police raided his apartment in Riga, seizing all electronic devices including his 7-year-old daughter’s tablet.
That followed the Feb. 26 conviction of Maksim Koptelov, a 31-year-old film student, for violating a criminal law against incitement to destroy Latvia’s independence with a similar petition proposing union with Russia.
Each maintains their action wasn’t serious. But the Baltic country’s tough response has focused attention on how far authorities can go to prosecute alleged enemies of the state without breaching basic principles they agreed to adhere to upon joining the European Union, such as freedom of speech.
Such questions are being raised across much of Eastern Europe, where governments in Warsaw, Budapest and elsewhere have adopted a more authoritarian tone.
Latvia’s Security Police said a probe into Mr. Barteckis’s petition was under way on suspicion it posed a threat to Latvia’s sovereignty.
Latvian government officials said they couldn’t comment on the police investigation or on court matters.
Since parting ways with the Soviet Union shortly before its 1991 demise, Latvia has been looking west: It joined the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2004 and adopted the euro as its currency in 2014.
Despite this steady geopolitical shift, Latvian authorities have been worried that the country’s Russian minority—about a quarter of the total population of 2 million—was looking east.
Those concerns swelled two years ago when a newly assertive Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula—which is largely ethnic Russian—prompting some Latvian nationalists to describe ethnic Russians in the Baltics as a potential menace.
Latvia recently adopted a law to toughen the penalties for incitement against the country’s independence. Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis has said Latvia needed to defend itself against what he described as Russian campaigns of propaganda and disinformation. “Russia has unfortunately started a hybrid war,” Mr. Kucinskis said at a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in April.
Russia has said it had no plan to attack Baltic countries but has pledged to defend the rights of ethnic Russians abroad.
Under Soviet rule, it was calling for Latvia’s independence that carried risk.
Latvia was occupied by the Red Army in spring 1940. A new parliament was elected and its first order of business was to petition for Latvia’s admission to the U.S.S.R.—which Moscow immediately accepted.
Karlis Skenderskis was a 22-year old medical student in Riga in 1984 when he was summoned by the KGB and interrogated for having allegedly spread secessionist ideas, according to a recent study of the former Soviet secret police.
“I suppose someone ratted on me,” Mr. Skenderskis, now 54, said in an interview. He said he denied all accusations and was let go, but added the encounter with the KGB led him to be cautious about expressing opinions.
Mr. Koptelov, who is free pending appeal of his conviction and six-month sentence, says he thought he had no reason to hide his ideas in modern-day Latvia.
In March 2014, days after Russia moved into Crimea, he wrote in Russian on Avaaz, an online platform, that Latvia’s entry into the Russian Federation would open “vast prospects for development.”
In a post-script, he wrote: “In fact, this document doesn’t bear any significance and happens to be a joke.”
Acting on public complaints, Security Police identified Mr. Koptelov as the author of the petition, which he signed with his first name only, according to court documents.
During a monthslong trial, Mr. Koptelov said his petition was inspired by bitterness that his late father had lived out his last years with a derisory pension.
He told the court that he had sought to “joke about the Latvian state the way it had joked with his father,” according to the court documents.
A legal expert called by the Security Police, Lauris Liepa, testified the petition could be seen as an attack on the “core value” of the Latvian constitution.
Yelena Kvjatkovska, a human-rights lawyer based in Riga, said she had found no precedent to the Koptelov case in post-Soviet Latvia’s jurisprudence.
She called it “a clear case” for the European Court for Human Rights. “It raises serious issues regarding the freedom of expression,” she said.
Mr. Koptelov’s attorney, Ilona Bulgakova, said she would take the case there if they lose their appeal in local courts. The trial court had “brought shame to Latvia,” she said.
Mr. Barteckis, a freelance reporter, said in an interview that his petition to join the U.S. “was just a reaction against a disproportionate punishment on Mr. Koptelov.”
Mr. Koptvelov’s petition is still online; As of Aug. 22, it had garnered 7,540 signatures. Mr. Barteckis’s had 130.
Write to David Gauthier-Villars at David.Gauthier-Villars@wsj.com
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