By adopting amendments to the Law on the Safety of Public Entertainment and Festivity Events, the Saeima banned the organization of May 9 celebrations in their current format - with large-scale celebrations at Soviet army memorials. The draft law in its original form only banned the use of symbols praising military aggression at public events, including the use of the letter Z for this purpose.
"We are talking here about a ban on May 9. You understand all this, or was it not clear before? This draft law, this proposal, prohibits the celebration, assembly or otherwise marking May 9 as Victory Day in the whole territory of Latvia," said Artuss Kaimiņš, chairman of the Saeima Human Rights and Public Affairs Committee, who drafted the draft law.
The majority of the Saeima has achieved this effect by approving a proposal by Kaimiņš and Linda Medne, representing the Conservatives (Konservatīvie) party, which bans the promotion and glorification of events containing the ideology of the Nazi and Communist regimes at public events, including birthdays of persons representing these ideologies, commemoration days of battles and victories, and days of celebrating of the occupation of territories of free and independent states or parts thereof.
Exceptions to this provision will be made in cases where the purpose of these events is not related to the glorification of totalitarian regimes or the justification of criminal offences committed, or the events are used for educational, scientific or artistic purposes.
Another new part added to the law reinforces the traditional ban on May 9 celebrations: it is now forbidden to hold public events within 200 meters of any monument commemorating the victory and memory of the Soviet army or its soldiers.
Exceptions are also provided in this case. Andrejs Judins, representing New Unity (Jaunā Vienotība), explains that skiing, dancing or similar entertainment events can still be organized by state or municipal authorities, as they do not need a permit under the law. When considering an application for a private event, the municipality will be able to refuse permission even at a greater distance from the monuments, while up to 200 meters there will be no discussion - no public events are allowed.
Predictably, these proposals were opposed by representatives of the opposition Harmony (Saskaņa) party. Nikolajs Kabanovs sardonically said that it would take too big a force to be able to prevent the celebrations from taking place and that this would endanger national security.
"The proposal is absolutely harmful. Why is it harmful? The large number of people celebrating May 9 in one way or another makes it virtually impossible to stop it with the existing police force. This means that, in order to stop people who wanted to celebrate May 9 in this or that way, we would have to supplement the police with the National Guard, with the army. And so the defense of Latvia will be open, in fact, at that difficult time when Latvia is threatened by aggression from the Russian Federation, as the Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Defense declare. Unfortunately, troublemakers, such as Kaimiņš, they want to take certain forces away from the Latvian order," said Kabanovs.
Boris Cilevičs, for his part, rightly pointed out that the authors of the proposals had been too timid or indecisive in their wording. "If you wanted to propose a ban on May 9, why didn't you just submit such an amendment - to ban the celebration of May 9 in the whole territory of Latvia?", the MP asked rhetorically from the rostrum of the Saeima.
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