Over de grens: Staatloosheid in Letland en hoe Europese landen tegen Roma, Joden en Moslims aankijken
A decision taken over 25 years ago has left many in Latvia feeling rootless. When the country regained independence in 1991, the Russians who had arrived under Soviet rule were denied citizenship. This decision left 700,000 former citizens of the Soviet Union alienated by the country taking shape around them. That number is now thought to be 260,000 . Evgeny Drobat came to Soviet Latvia from St. Petersburg – then Leningrad – in 1947, when he was just a child. As a member of Latvia’s Communist Party in the years leading up to independence, he voted against the parliamentary law that would end up denying him and thousands of other ethnic Russia’s citizenship in an independent Latvia. “Latvia is not a true democracy,” he told Vice News from Daugavpils, Latvia’s second city. “The country’s politics are not based on democratic rights, they are based on ethnic rights.” More: https://news.vice.com/story/latvias-non-citizen-policy-leaves-thousan...