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(((It'll be interesting to see if a DDOS surge against this small Baltic state accompanies these Russian ethnic protests.)))
Deutsche Press Agentur
November 2, 2007 Friday 3:07 PM EST
HEADLINE: PREVIEW: Latvia's Russians divided over planned protest
DATELINE: Riga
Protest scheduled for Saturday Riga
Latvia's Russian minority is split over whether it should participate in a mass rally planned for Saturday in the
Latvian capital.
Organisers say they expect at least 10,000 people to show up at the protest defending the rule of law and democracy in the small
Baltic country, which joined the European Union and the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2004.
"If you don't hear a Russian voice in the crowd on Saturday, it means we've learned something," the newspaper proclaimed.
Sixteen years since Latvia regained its independence after 50
years of Soviet occupation, many of the country's 600,000 ethnic
Russians remain ambivalent about their place in society. Around 18
per cent of Latvia's 2.3 million population still does not have citizenship and therefore cannot vote in elections.
However, many members of the Latvian Russian community, including members of the Harmony Centre political party, say that corruption and lawlessness goes beyond ethnic lines and are supporting
Saturday's event.
"Corruption is as harmful to Latvians as it is to Russians," party leader Nils Usakovs told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on the eve of the demonstration.
"Some Russians will participate in the public process because it's when we decide our future," said the 31-year-old journalist-turned-
politician, who gained his own citizenship in 1999.
Many Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians settled in Latvia during the Soviet era but were not granted automatic citizenship with the re-establishment of an independent state, the most contentious issue in the post-Soviet Latvia. Today, Latvian government requires applicants to pass citizenship tests.
In recent months, a series of scandals inside government, the security services, parliament and the judicial system have caused widespread disillusionment among the population, finally resulting in several public protests of which Saturday's is expected to be the largest so far.
The focus of public anger has become the government's attempt to dismiss anti-corruption chief Aleksejs Loskutovs from his position.
Nov 0207 1507 GMT
