The Review of the International Well As the Closely Related Citizenship Commuuum of Jurists More Than a Year Laws, Laws on Immigration, and Laws Ago
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For the Rule of Law T he R eview International Commission of Jurists A rtic le s The Law on Aliens Controversy in the Baltic States D agm ara Vallerui 1 The Russian Armed Intervention in Chechnya and its Human Rights Implications N icoLu M .L . Bov ay 29 C o m m en ta ry The United Nations Commission on Human Rights: 51st Session 57 Basic Texts Council of Europe - Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and Explanatory Report 79 Council of Europe - Additional Protocol to the European Social Charter Providing for a System of Collective Complaints 105 World Summit for Social Development, Copenhagen 6-12 March 1995, Evaluation by the International Commission of Jurists 111 N° 54 J u n e 1995 Editor: Adama Dieng A rticled The Law on Aliens Controversy in the Baltic Stated Dag mar a Valleru' Introduction could describe them without reaching a final conclusion. At the time of writing I promised to write a report on this (August 1995), the Laws on Aliens, as topic for the Review of the International well as the closely related Citizenship Commuuum of Jurists more than a year Laws, Laws on Immigration, and Laws ago. It seemed to be an easy enough task on Language in Estonia, Latvia, and when I started: just look up the data and Lithuania, were in the various stages of do it. Only then did I begin to be fully being supplemented, changed, or fini aware of the tumultuous circumstances shed. Therefore, this report will be more in which laws in the Baltic countries are like a snapshot in time than a conclusive being created; that the definitions used review of the subject. there sometimes take up a loaded’ mea ning, especially for outsiders; that the The subject is an involved one; dea interpretation tends to be either too ling with various groups of people to superficial or too deep. Finally, the laws whom too much has happened in too themselves - the actual words, lines, and short a time. A real injustice can be done paragraphs therein - keep changing. to every one of these groups by making quick and superficial decisions.1 At For a while I was waiting for the times, it appears that international laws that I was concerned with to solidi human rights authorities are more inter fy; but they kept on acquiring amend ested in having peace and quiet than in ments, going through twists and turns. justice. Aware that the three Baltic Then I realized that in order to really States desperately seek admittance to understand a law, it is important to Western alliances in order to have some understand the process leading to it. I security from Russia - their unstable and * Dagmara Vallens was born in Riga, Latvia, and is a journalist. She has written extensively for Latvian newspapers in the West since 1958. She has been an accredited member of the UN press corps in New York since 1968 and a Correspondent for Bndb Free Europe (Latvian Section) since 1975. Since 1966, she has been active in UBA/BATUN (a New York-Based NGO dealing with human rights issues in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). 1 International human rights authorities, instead of paying attention only to the Laws on Aliens and Citizenship Laws, should also inspect recent studies on involuntary population transfer. often aggressive neighbour to the East killings, more deportations, and a guer international agencies with the power to rilla war that lasted for almost a decade. In influence world opinion press the Balts addition, about 10 percent of the inhabi to pass legislation that is not necessarily in tants fled to the West. anyone’s long-term interest. The unruly neighbour to the East, in turn, knows At that point, in Estonia and Latvia, how to manipulate facts and opinions to a only 50 to 60 percent of the indigenous point where the plaintiff becomes the population was alive and living in the defendant. The politicians in power in area of their original homes. And yet the Baltic States can thus find them their culture, their outlook on life, their selves in a situation where they cannot language and songs survived and m do much more than procrastinate. In some ways even influenced the newco this context, implementation of laws in mers. For it is a veiy old culture: the Baltic States seems to be the weakest Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians part of the process of returning to nor have lived in their land for more than malcy. 4000 years. Their ancient wisdom on how to live in harmony with nature is highly regarded by modern ecologists. Historical Background Allowed to thrive, they would be able to contribute their part to the Family of Before even attempting to begin, it Nations. But they need their land, the should be stressed that the area in question only place in which they can raise their has suffered several tremendous shocks children according to their own tradi over the last 50 years. In 1940, Estonia, tions and live their own life. Latvia and Lithuania, - three indepen dent and relatively prosperous States by That was not to be for 50 long years. the Baltic Sea - were occupied by the After reoceupying the land during Soviet Union as a result of a secret Nazi- World War II, the Soviets confiscated Soviet agreement - the Molotov- all private property and combined the Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. In one year most of their statesmen, intellectual lea individual farms into huge State enter ders, successful businessmen, rich far prises. They started to bring in large mers, famous artists, higher army offi numbers of people from other Soviet cers, and people who showed any type republics, mostly Russia. The newco of resistance were eliminated, shot, or mers constituted the bulk of the ruling deported to concentration camps. circle (called “Nomenklatura”) during During the Nazi occupation years the Soviet era. As the Soviet Union (1941-1945), another great population disintegrated and Estonia, Latvia and loss occurred through war action, invo Lithuania declared restoration of their luntary conscription into the German independence, certain of the newcomers army, and Nazi actions against political (typically the "Nomenklatura”) resented opponents - as well as the elimination of the loss of their privileged status and whole population groups: Jews, Gypsies hoped to regain it - if not in the previous and the mentally ill. As W orld W ar II “Socialist” form then perhaps in the ended, Soviet power returned with more form of a revanchist Russian Empire. Tke more I think about it, the more I Gorbachov launched “Glasnost” and have to admit that it is a tremendous “Perestroika” - eventually resulting in achievement of the three Baltic nations the total breakdown of the Soviet even to attempt to return their countries Union. As the process spun out of to a society based upon the Rule of Law. control, the Baltic nations seized the For fifty years the law was something to opportunity to announce the renewal of fear and hardly to rely on. For example, their independence (March-May 1990). one could be sentenced to 10 years in In August 1991, events came to a head Siberia for nothing (for a genuine cause and the Balts officially declared the one could get a 25 year sentence). The reinstatement of their independence. written law was supplanted daily by They could not wait and settle all the secretive telephone calls from “above.” inevitable complications with Russia People were accustomed to a life where first, for fear of losing the rare moment government pretends to pay them and in history when the breakaway was pos they pretend to work. The real success sible. Within three weeks, more than depended on “blat,” a mafia type of net 100 governments had recognized de jure working. Only the Party bosses and and de facto the restoration of the inde government higher-ups could quote law to pendence of Estonia, Latvia and you; if you tried to quote law to them, Lithuania. O n 17 September 1991, they you were bound to get in trouble. Often it became members of the United Nations. was enough to belong to the wrong social class - the peasant, the bourgeoi At the beginning, Russian President sie, the intellectual - to stop one from Boris Yeltsin and his government see ever succeeding in any meaningful way. med to be friendly towards the Baltic The anti-Jewish repressions in Stalin’s States, but this mood soon changed. The time are well documented; less known is old and deeply ingrained wish of most the fact that one could be sentenced to Russians - to restore the Czarist Empire - long years of slave labour and internal took over in the Russian leadership, lea exile for just being a Latvian.2 There was ving the fledgling strivings for democracy a strong Moscow-led Russification drive far behind. For their vehicle, they chose in all Soviet republics with the goal of the 25 million Russians living in the for marginalizing and eventually eradicating mer Soviet republics. Now independent all other languages in the Soviet Union States, which they labelled the “near “for the sake of efficiency.” This was the abroad.” This strategy was most elo time when Soviet diplomats could hap quently spelled out by Mr. S. A. pily sign all kinds of international agree Karaganov, Deputy Director of the ments without batting an eye - while European Institute, at a seminar in never intending to abide by them. Moscow. He said that Russian-speaking minorities in the “Near Abroad” were a This was the situation in the mid- “powerful asset” needed to “preserve 1980's when President Mkhail our leverage in order to have influence 2 This information is now emerging in Riga, during the trial of Alfons Noviks, the NKVD (later KGB) chief for Latvia from 1940 to 1953.