Rights Watchdog Chides Latvia Over Russian Speaker

The head of Europe's main human rights body said on Friday Latvia was discriminating against its large Russian-speaking population.

The head of Europe's main human rights body said on Friday Latvia was discriminating against its large Russian-speaking population by not allowing many of them to vote in local government elections.

Russian-speakers make up a fifth of Latvia's population of 2.3 million, although many of them are stateless, and their status continues to strain relations between the small Baltic EU member and its large eastern neighbour.

Non-citizens lack voting rights in Latvia.

"It is a clear case of discrimination when people who are born in a country cannot vote even in local elections," the president of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, Rene van der Linden, told a news conference.

The Council oversees human rights standards in EU members and enforces decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.

Van der Linden said Latvia should work harder to reduce the number of stateless residents, who do not hold the citizenship of any country, and suggested the naturalisation process for Latvian citizenship could be free of fees for the elderly.

"The Council of Europe cannot accept that 16 percent of the population in a country is stateless," he said.

Earlier this week Van der Linden visited Estonia, where he said the government was being too slow in giving citizenship to its Russian-speakers, who make up a third of the 1.3 million population. In Estonia permanent residents have the same rights to vote in local government elections as do citizens.