RIGA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th November, 2019) The Latvian Constitutional Court has ruled that putting limits on teaching in minority languages in the country's private schools does not go against the Latvian constitution and international commitments, Alexei Dimitrov, a lawyer and human rights activist, said on Thursday.
On March 22, 2018, Latvia's parliament adopted amendments to its education laws mandating a gradual transition to educating in Latvian even in schools specifically set up for minority children starting in the 2019-2020 academic year. The full transition is supposed to be achieved by September 1, 2021.
"The Constitutional Court of Latvia has ruled that limiting teaching in the languages of the minorities corresponds to the constitution and Latvia's international commitments. The court pointed out that the possibility of teaching in minority languages remained, albeit on a limited scale," Dimitrov posted on Facebook.
Despite being a native language for about 40 percent of the Latvian population, the Russian language is classified as foreign.
The amendments to the education law caused a stir among the Russian-speaking population in the country. In October, several thousand people took part in a march defending Russian-language education in Latvia. The protesters carried posters in Latvian, English and Russian, saying "school reforms = ethnocide?", "Stop the disaster of Russian education in Latvia", "Russian children - education in their native language!" and others.
