• Study “Topical Aspects of Social Integration”
• Diena prints an article on the Holocaust by the Holocaust researcher Jehuda Bauer
• Society Integration Foundation announced a tender for providing Latvian language learning courses
• Festivity of Slavic Writing and Culture in Liepaja

Yesterday, the Secretariat of the Special Assignments Minister for Social Integration presented a study “Topical Aspects of Social Integration” conducted by the Marketing and Public Opinion Research Centre “SKDS.” The study shows attitudes of Latvian residents towards integration issues. According to the results only 9% of the residents believe that Latvian society is stable enough. 32% of the respondents consider that Latvian citizenship should be granted automatically and 27 % consider that the naturalisation procedure is humiliating.  The majority of the respondents also believe that better living standards would have positive impact on the level of integration. Vesti Segodnya

Today Latvia marks the Rremembrance Day of the Victims of Genocide against the Jewish Nation. Jehuda Bauer provides a number of arguments why the Holocaust should be used as a tool in educating youth about discrimination, racism and genocide. He concludes that we all are endangered by hatred of other ethnic, religious, racial groups, cultures or civilizations and that this hatred has very deep roots and is difficult to eliminate. According to Bauer, the first step would be an agreement on providing education on genocide where the Holocaust would be studied as a precedent. 

On Friday, the Society Integration Foundation announced a tender for provision of Latvian language courses for adults. The Director of Latvia’s People’s School in an interview with Diena stated that the demand for free of charge courses from non-Latvians is very high, however, the state has granted only Ls 60,000 (EUR 85,372 ) this year which is four times less in comparison to last year’s funding.         

The Festivity of Slavic Writing and Culture organised by the Liepaja Ukrainian Union was held in Liepaja. Chas