The Weekly Crier (1998/07-08)

News Highlights from July 27—August 3, 1998

Despite a bitter history of invasion, few Balts believe their nations are now under military threat, according to a recent poll commissioned in part by NATO.
Fewer than five percent of respondents in the Baltics said they thought there wasn’t any serious threat of attack from abroad, according to the poll conducted by the Tallinn-based Saar Poll agency for both NATO and Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry.
In the short term, most Balts said they see more serious threats coming from within. Over 60 percent of Latvian residents surveyed said crime and corruption posed the greatest danger to national security.
Even if there were attacks on their countries, a vast majority of Balts expressed little confidence in their national armies. In all three countries, over 70 percent of respondents said they didn’t believe their militaries could successfully repulse an aggressor.
They also said they had no faith that Western countries would come to their aid. Only 15 percent of those polled in Latvia and Lithuania, and 23 percent in Estonia said the West would offer military assistance.
A majority did say they believed the Baltics would receive strong diplomatic support.
*

Prosecutors say they could press charges after a Latvian man received serious knife wounds during the reenactment of a medieval-era skirmish over the weekend.
Gatis Indrevics, 18, was sparring in the garb of a medieval knight when a fellow combatant reached inadvertently for a real knife and thrust it into Indrevics’ side.
The Baltic News Service said the attacker had become overly excited in the heat of the mock battle and mistook the sharp-edged knife for a blunt, stylized knife that normally poses no risk.
Indrevics is still in intensive care, but his life is not in danger.
Prosecutors said the man who knifed Indrevics could be charged with reckless endangerment, which carries a maximum penalty of one year in prison.
The mishap took place in Cesis, some 75 kilometers northeast of Riga, a stronghold of 13th century German knights who fought to Christianize pagan peoples along the Baltic coast.
Reenacting battles from the era has become popular in Latvia in recent years. Injuries during reenactments are rare.
*

Emigration of Russians from the Baltic states to Russia has slowed steadily in recent years and is now just several thousand a year.
Around 10,000 Russians left the Baltics for Russia in 1997, down from around 80,000 in 1992, according to figures recently released by Moscow’s migration board.
In Estonia, 3,483 Russians departed for Russia in 1997 compared to 24,440 in 1992; in Latvia, 5,638 left in 1997 compared to 27,271 in 1992. In Lithuania, 1,785 people moved to Russia last year, compared to 15, 354 in 1992.
Russian migration head, Tatayna Regent, told the Baltic News Service that mass migration of Russians had virtually ceased.
“Those who live there now don’t want to emigrate—they want to live in the Baltics,” she said.
*

Riga and Tallinn had the dubious honor of making it onto a recently published list of the world’s most expensive cities. More than 175 cities were rated by the Geneva-based Corporate Resources Group, which surveyed American ex-pats living in the cities. Hong Kong was rated the costliest city, followed by Tokyo, Beijing and Moscow. Riga ranked 45th, above the likes of Helsinki, Chicago and Los Angeles. Tallinn was 109th; Vilnius was not on the list. For the survey, the cost of living in New York was the baseline and assigned a rate of 100.

To follow is an abridged version of the list:

1. Hong Kong 157
2. Tokyo 154
3. Beijing 153
4. Moscow 151
5. Shanghai, China 144
6. Osaka, Japan 140
7. Guangzhou, China 122
8. St. Petersburg, Russia 115
9. Dalian, China 112
10. London 111
11. Shenzhen, China 110
12. Kiev, Ukraine 110
13. Singapore 109
14. Luanda, Angola 105
15. Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania 103
16. Sao Paulo, Brazil 102
17. Geneva 100
18. Zurich, Switzerland 100
19. Tel Aviv, Israel 100
20. Buenos Aires, Argentina 100
21. New York 100
26. Tehran, Iran 97
27. Hanoi, Vietnam 96
28. Oslo, Norway 96
45. RIGA, LATVIA 88
51. Los Angeles 86
52. Chicago 85
53. Honolulu 85.
57. Helsinki, Finland 84
60. Berlin 83
61. Stockholm, Sweden 82
72. Washington, D.C. 80
73. Boston 80
102. Prague, Czech Republic 74
104. Toronto 74
105. Lusaka, Zambia
106. Barcelona, Spain 74
107. Lyon, France 73
108. Pointe Noire, Republic of Congo
109. TALLINN, ESTONIA 73
110. Dakar, Senegal 73
111. Leipzig, Germany 73
113. Auckland, New Zealand 72
114. Melbourne, Australia 72

News Highlights from July 20—July 27, 1998

*

Israel’s chief rabbi arrived in Lithuania’s capital on July 22 to negotiate the fate of some 300 Jewish holy scriptures which survived Nazi occupation and decades of Soviet neglect.
Rabbi Israel Meir Lau is seeking possession of the scriptures, or Torahs, in order to hand them over to synagogues or to dispose of them according to strict religious custom. They are now being kept in the Lithuanian National Library in Vilnius.
While Rabbi Lau’s visit is unofficial, he is being accompanied by several leading officials from Israel’s Ministry of Religious Affairs. The delegation will meet with Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus on Friday.
Jewish religious leaders have expressed concern that the sacred scrolls, which are hand-written by rabbis on parchment made from cow hides, are not currently being stored according to religious law.
The scriptures originally came from synagogues all across Lithuania, a main center of European Jewry before World War II. Over 90 percent of some 250,000 Lithuanian Jews were killed during the Nazi occupation from 941-1944.
Many of the holy parchments were saved and hidden away before Nazis ransacked and torched virtually all the synagogues in Lithuania. Some scriptures not immediately destroyed by the Nazis were desecrated—some made into lampshades.
During Soviet rule in Lithuania, from 1944-1991, Jewish scriptures were badly neglected and, in some cases, also destroyed.
The Israeli embassy—based in the Latvian capital Riga—said many of the scriptures now in Lithuania’s central library are in poor condition. Some had apparently been lying for years on the floor of Catholic monastery, embassy press spokesman Joel Lion said in a telephone interview.
Lion said he didn’t expect a formal agreement on the scrolls during the rabbi’s visit. He insisted the issue of the scrolls was not a contentious one with Lithuania, but said people in the small Baltic nation needed to appreciate their importance.
“We just want to explain to the Lithuanians how we see the problem, to explain that these things are not like books,” he said. “I don’t know if their is resistance from the Lithuanians or simply a lack of knowledge.” Lion said the scrolls are so sacred that when, in the process of writing, a rabbi writes the name of god, he has to bathe himself. Damaged scriptures are supposed to be buried in consecrated ground, and those in good condition must be kept in a synagogue.
“According to Jewish tradition, those are the only two options,” he said.
Lithuanian-Israeli relations have at time been strained over the role some Lithuanians played in the Holocaust. Israel has criticized the country in the past for acting too slowly to bring Lithuanians accused of Nazi war crimes to justice.
But the Israeli embassy spokesman said relations had normalized. “We are just two countries with normal relations that have to solve some problems rooted in the past,” he said. “The issue of the these scrolls is one of those issues.”

*

EU Commissioner Hans Van den Broek has called on Russia to stop applying economic pressure on Latvia, saying any sanctions against the small Baltic state were counterproductive.
“We’ve made it clear to Russia that we do not accept their attempts to mix political and economic issues,” Van den Broek said in a speech at Latvia’s stock exchange building in Riga on July 20. “We resist unjustified pressure on an EU candidate.”
In recent months, Russia has threatened to divert lucrative transit trade away from Latvia to penalize the country for allegedly discriminating against its large Russian-speaking minority. Moscow also recently imposed higher fees for Latvian rail traffic through Russia. While the Latvian government says Russian sanctions are starting to bite, many independent observers say it is still unclear whether Latvia’s economy is being adversely affected.
Russia says it is defending the interests of some 700,000 Russian-speakers in Latvia who have still not qualified for Latvian citizenship. It says Latvian naturalization laws are too stringent, and permanently disenfranchise Russian-speakers.
Latvia recently softened some naturalization rules, including granting automatic citizenship to children of non-citizens born after 1991. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) praised the changes, but Moscow says they don’t go far enough.
Van den Broek also threw his support behind the citizenship amendments. “We do not think Latvia should do more than is asked by the OSCE,” he said.
He also argued that Russian economic pressure would backfire. “We think Russia’s pressure on Latvia hurts the aims Russia says it pursues,” he said. “This pressure will scare the non-citizens away from integration into Latvian society rather than encourage their integration.”
The EU Commissioner, however, also urged Latvia to work harder at bringing Russian-speakers into the mainstream of Latvian society.
“We hope that Latvia will take all necessary steps to foster this integration,” he said. “This applies to the citizenship law, but also to language laws, and to the need to enhance Latvian-language training for non-Latvian speakers.”

*

European Commissioner Hans van den Broek said Tuesday in Lithuania that the country was making good economic progress—but stopped short of promising that it would get an invite this year to start talks on EU membership.
Speaking at a press conference at the end of a one-day visit to the Baltic-coast nation, van den Broek praised Lithuania for speeding up privatizaton and spurring strong economic growth—set to top 5 percent for 1998.
But he refused to predict how soon Lithuania would join the EU, or whether it would even be asked later late this year to begin membership talks.
“Lithuania will join the EU, the faster the better. But making this happen is a technical exercise which we will conduct scrupulously,” he told journalists. “If a country joins before it is ready, this would harm the country and it would harm the EU.”
He said Lithuania still needed to make progress “in the modernization of enterprises, and in achieving a clear, transparent and predictable economic environment.”
Among the three Baltic states, only Estonia has received a coveted invite to begin negotiations on full EU membership. The other two Baltics, Lithuania and Latvia, have expressed anger at being left out, saying they deserved to start EU talks as much as Estonia.
In addition to Estonia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Cyprus also got the nod from the EU and have already begun talks on joining the elite European body.
After meeting the EU Commissioner Tuesday, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Algirdas Saudargas expressed confidence that the EU Commissioner would report back to Brussels that Lithuania was also now a prime EU candidate.
He insisted that his country was not far behind the other leading EU candidates, like Poland and Hungary. But he said an economic gap could develop if Lithuania was again left off the EU’s list.
“We are seeking an invitation to negotiations by the end of this year so as to prevent such a gap from forming,” BNS quoted him as saying. Brussels is currently drafting a new report on EU-candidate countries.
The report will be delivered at an EU meeting this December, when the EU could extend new invitations.
Both Lithuania and Latvia—which the EU Commissioner visited on Monday—have said they are confident they will receive one.