You would think Latvians would have more to worry about than grandad’s wartime service record. The tsunami that is the global economic crisis washed over the Baltic country leaving devastation in its wake.
The Latvian economy is scheduled to shrink by 18% in the next year. The government’s had to slash public spending which has put doctors, nurses and teachers on the dole as schools and hospitals close. Wages have been cut by 30% or more. As it is, unemployment’s running at 17%.
And as for the property boom ? Well, it seems most mortgage payers are now in negative equity and, as those mortgages are in euros, many are facing repossession. Banks aren’t lending. The IMF is demanding Latvia reduce its national debt to 8.5% of GDP this year, thus almost certainly meaning more budget cutbacks. There have been riots on the streets of Riga and one change of Prime Minister.
And it the midst of all this chaos the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls in the British Ambassador to complain about David Milliband’s outburst that some politicians in Latvia glorify Hitler’s Waffen SS.
The Foreign Secretary’s comments were a barb thrown at the Tories for including an MEP from Latvia’s For Fatherland And Freedom Party in its rag-tag army of Brussels Eurosceptics (I’ve blogged about this mob often enough before).
The timing was pre-planned to coincide with the arrival of the Baltic party’s leader at the Tory conference fringe. Roberts Zile says he isn’t a Nazi apologist and has never glorified the SS. But their history is a murky one.
After the Germans kicked the Soviets out of Latvia in 1941 there’s no doubt some Latvians helped the Nazis kill Jews. Some of them later went onto become members of the Waffen SS when there weren’t enough Germans left to fill the divisions.
Many were just teenagers who were told they could fight in an SS uniform or become a slave labourer in Germany. Others were anti-communists who wanted to stop a Soviet re-invasion of Latvia. Some more were those guilty of war crimes. But not according to the Latvian government.
Its official policy is that grandad had no choice, he had to go off and put on a German uniform and he certainly didn’t kill any Jews. So, in its eyes, there’s nothing wrong with visiting memorials (constructed after Latvia gained its independence from the Soviet Union) honouring those who died wearing SS colours. The official line is they were only doing either what they were forced to do or what they thought was right to save Latvian independence.
Hence the ticking off for Milliband. And most ethnic Latvians agree with their government, and Zile, not the UK one, so they are not, on the whole, likely to take very well to lectures from foreigners about moral choices people in Britain didn’t have to face.
And across Nazi-occupied Europe, in almost every country Hitler invaded, locals either joined the SS because they were right-wing fanatics or were press-ganged into donning German uniforms to make up for a shortage of manpower.
While some Latvians are still in denial over their wartime past and some certainly need to admit the truth over their countrymen’s participation in the Holocaust, Milliband’s attack on For Fatherland and Freedom won’t stick.
He no doubt chose the SS subject matter because of the emotional resonance it has in Britain. But it is far too easy for Zile and others to deflect. Milliband might have had more luck had he tried homophobia and bizarre attitudes to who is, and isn’t Latvian.
For Fatherland And Freedom don’t stand out from the crowd in Latvia over attitudes to the country’s wartime record, but in matters of who actually is a Latvian then they do.
More than ten years ago they attempted to give Latvian citizenship to people who had never set foot in the country but deny it to those who were born there. Because Latvia had a huge Russian and Ukrainian immigrant population they feared the indigenous culture would be strangled.
So they proposed all the Latvians who had fled abroad to escape the Soviets in 1945, and all their descendants, should AUTOMATICALLY get a passport. But the Russians and Ukrainians who were born there shouldn’t. They lost a referendum, only narrowly, and the Russian-speakers still have to jump through hoops to get citizenship that is freely available to Latvians born in Britain, the US and Australia. (One hoop is admitting the Soviet backed influx of Russians into Latvia was illegal).
The Latvian economy is scheduled to shrink by 18% in the next year. The government’s had to slash public spending which has put doctors, nurses and teachers on the dole as schools and hospitals close. Wages have been cut by 30% or more. As it is, unemployment’s running at 17%.
And as for the property boom ? Well, it seems most mortgage payers are now in negative equity and, as those mortgages are in euros, many are facing repossession. Banks aren’t lending. The IMF is demanding Latvia reduce its national debt to 8.5% of GDP this year, thus almost certainly meaning more budget cutbacks. There have been riots on the streets of Riga and one change of Prime Minister.
And it the midst of all this chaos the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls in the British Ambassador to complain about David Milliband’s outburst that some politicians in Latvia glorify Hitler’s Waffen SS.
The Foreign Secretary’s comments were a barb thrown at the Tories for including an MEP from Latvia’s For Fatherland And Freedom Party in its rag-tag army of Brussels Eurosceptics (I’ve blogged about this mob often enough before).
The timing was pre-planned to coincide with the arrival of the Baltic party’s leader at the Tory conference fringe. Roberts Zile says he isn’t a Nazi apologist and has never glorified the SS. But their history is a murky one.
After the Germans kicked the Soviets out of Latvia in 1941 there’s no doubt some Latvians helped the Nazis kill Jews. Some of them later went onto become members of the Waffen SS when there weren’t enough Germans left to fill the divisions.
Many were just teenagers who were told they could fight in an SS uniform or become a slave labourer in Germany. Others were anti-communists who wanted to stop a Soviet re-invasion of Latvia. Some more were those guilty of war crimes. But not according to the Latvian government.
Its official policy is that grandad had no choice, he had to go off and put on a German uniform and he certainly didn’t kill any Jews. So, in its eyes, there’s nothing wrong with visiting memorials (constructed after Latvia gained its independence from the Soviet Union) honouring those who died wearing SS colours. The official line is they were only doing either what they were forced to do or what they thought was right to save Latvian independence.
Hence the ticking off for Milliband. And most ethnic Latvians agree with their government, and Zile, not the UK one, so they are not, on the whole, likely to take very well to lectures from foreigners about moral choices people in Britain didn’t have to face.
And across Nazi-occupied Europe, in almost every country Hitler invaded, locals either joined the SS because they were right-wing fanatics or were press-ganged into donning German uniforms to make up for a shortage of manpower.
While some Latvians are still in denial over their wartime past and some certainly need to admit the truth over their countrymen’s participation in the Holocaust, Milliband’s attack on For Fatherland and Freedom won’t stick.
He no doubt chose the SS subject matter because of the emotional resonance it has in Britain. But it is far too easy for Zile and others to deflect. Milliband might have had more luck had he tried homophobia and bizarre attitudes to who is, and isn’t Latvian.
For Fatherland And Freedom don’t stand out from the crowd in Latvia over attitudes to the country’s wartime record, but in matters of who actually is a Latvian then they do.
More than ten years ago they attempted to give Latvian citizenship to people who had never set foot in the country but deny it to those who were born there. Because Latvia had a huge Russian and Ukrainian immigrant population they feared the indigenous culture would be strangled.
So they proposed all the Latvians who had fled abroad to escape the Soviets in 1945, and all their descendants, should AUTOMATICALLY get a passport. But the Russians and Ukrainians who were born there shouldn’t. They lost a referendum, only narrowly, and the Russian-speakers still have to jump through hoops to get citizenship that is freely available to Latvians born in Britain, the US and Australia. (One hoop is admitting the Soviet backed influx of Russians into Latvia was illegal).
Today there are hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking "non-citizens" who won't jump to the Latvian tune and who can't get a passport to travel abroad. Some have undergone "naturalisation" but Zile's party stood in the 2006 elections on the ticket of stopping the Russians gaining any kind of Latvian citizenship.
Even today Zile told the newspaper “Latvijas Avizei” that the country should be “very cautious” about who is Latvian, citing the example of his French teacher in Brussels who “might have been from one of the Indochinese countries” who declared themselves to be French.
In Zile’s view, then, to be Latvian you have to speak the language, be “a patriot” and, it would appear the case that you have to look Latvian as well. Anything which seems foreign has to be guarded against. And he gets away with this in an EU country ?
His attitude to the Russian-speaking minority is barely contemptuous. “I see Latvia as a country dominated by the Latvian language and culture and by the political determination of the Latvians,” he told Latvijas Avizei. Of ethnic minorities there is no mention. He dismisses co-operation with the main party that represents Russians.
And this guy is in government. He is one of the main “experts” that is supposed to lead Latvia out of the economic morass it finds itself in.
Maybe Milliband should have been highlighting this as the kind of European partner Dave wants to encourage ; a near-miss xenophobe with extreme right-wing and anti-gay ideas. Imagine a member of the UK cabinet going around shouting 'Britain for the British'. And they want him to lead the economy back on the straight and narrow ?
There is a blogger who calls his site “Failed State Latvia ?” Maybe soon he can drop the question mark.
Even today Zile told the newspaper “Latvijas Avizei” that the country should be “very cautious” about who is Latvian, citing the example of his French teacher in Brussels who “might have been from one of the Indochinese countries” who declared themselves to be French.
In Zile’s view, then, to be Latvian you have to speak the language, be “a patriot” and, it would appear the case that you have to look Latvian as well. Anything which seems foreign has to be guarded against. And he gets away with this in an EU country ?
His attitude to the Russian-speaking minority is barely contemptuous. “I see Latvia as a country dominated by the Latvian language and culture and by the political determination of the Latvians,” he told Latvijas Avizei. Of ethnic minorities there is no mention. He dismisses co-operation with the main party that represents Russians.
And this guy is in government. He is one of the main “experts” that is supposed to lead Latvia out of the economic morass it finds itself in.
Maybe Milliband should have been highlighting this as the kind of European partner Dave wants to encourage ; a near-miss xenophobe with extreme right-wing and anti-gay ideas. Imagine a member of the UK cabinet going around shouting 'Britain for the British'. And they want him to lead the economy back on the straight and narrow ?
There is a blogger who calls his site “Failed State Latvia ?” Maybe soon he can drop the question mark.
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