Hundreds rally in Latvian capital to support Russian language in schools

Around 5,000 people held a public rally in Riga on Thursday against proposed changes at ethnic Russian minority schools, which would make it mandatory to teach students exclusively in Latvian, TASS reported. “Our goal is to protect Russian schools and to defend the right to speak and learn in their native tongue. It is neither the first nor the last protest,” said Andrey Tolmachyov of the Russian School Protection Headquarters movement. “We will be staging rallies until the authorities hear us.” The movement unites Russians, Belarussians, Jews, Kazakhs, Tatars and others, he said. “Nobody is against studying Latvian, but we are against our children’s forced assimilation,” he added. The next step could be a nationwide referendum on teaching in a native tongue, the rally’s organizers say.