The Latvian State Security Service (VDD) on Friday requested that the prosecution initiate criminal proceedings against Riga City Council member and leader of the Stability! party, Aleksejs Rosļikovs, for deliberately inciting hatred and discord between Latvians and Russians, the service reported.
The VDD launched the criminal process in connection with Rosļikovs’ statements at the Saeima sitting on the 5th of June this year, when he was still a Member of Parliament. The sitting concerned the further progress of the draft decision “Declaration on the Criminally Implemented Russification by the Soviet Occupation Regime in Latvia and the Elimination of its Linguistic Consequences.”
According to the VDD, during his speech from the Saeima rostrum, Rosļikovs opposed the declaration by deliberately spreading misleading information about its purpose — namely claiming that the declaration would supposedly impose a complete ban on speaking Russian in public spaces and private households. This, the VDD stresses, is false.
The VDD further notes that Rosļikovs made additional manipulative statements aimed at fostering dissatisfaction, resentment, and protest sentiment among Russian-speaking residents of Latvia toward the Latvian state and the Latvian people. In the VDD’s assessment, Rosļikovs’ speech as a whole was intended to incite hatred and discord between Latvians and Russians.
Following his speech on the 5th of June,
a parliamentary majority voted to remove Rosļikovs from the chamber.
From the rostrum, raising his voice, he asserted that Russian-speakers had also stood at the barricades alongside Latvians. He posed rhetorical questions about what restrictions might be imposed on Russian-speakers next — “separate reservations, or a law forbidding them to name their children certain names because they are ‘too Russian’.”
Rosļikovs also claimed that through various laws and decisions, the state had been “bombarding our families,” referring to Russian-speaking families. He stressed that a large part of Latvia’s population is Russian, that they speak Russian at home every day yet contribute to the country’s development — and that Latvia cannot progress without them. At the end of his speech, he shouted in Russian, “We are more! Russian is our language!” and made an obscene hand gesture. This led to the decision to expel him from the sitting and remove him from the chamber.
Rosļikovs is no longer a Member of Parliament, as he has since been elected to the Riga City Council.
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