Minister denies reports of Latvian demonstrations

Press, 21 November 1987, Page 11

Minister denies reports of Latvian demonstrations

NZPA-Reuter Vienna Latvian protesters clashed with thousands of Soviet police in demonstrations to mark the sixty-ninth anniversary of Latvia’s declaration of independence, a Latvian emigre group said yesterday.

In the coastal town of Liepaja, 900 people carrying the red and white flag of independent Latvia and singing the national hymn marched on Wednesday to the town centre where fighting apparently broke out with police, the emigres said.

One demonstrator was seriously injured, they said.

In Moscow, the Latvian Foreign Minister, Leonard Bartkevich, denied the reports.

He told a news conference that Western radio stations had Issued a "clarion call” to nationalists to mark the anniver-

sary but Latvian workers had come out in force to show they would not allow extremists on the streets. “There were no political demonstrations. Five drunks were arrested in Riga and eight in the republic as a whole. There were no cases of violence.

Like the other 14 Soviet republics, Latvia has a Foreign Ministry but foreign policy is laid down in Moscow.

In the capital, Riga, about 5000 police and militia with guard dogs blocked some 7000 Latvians who wanted to place flowers at a monument to Latvian independence, the emigre group said. Two Lutheran pastors, Yuris Rubenis and Mavis Ludivlks, and Janis Barkans, head of the Helsinki ’B6 group monitoring human rights abuses in Latviak, were arrested.