The publisher of an anti-Semitic and anti-Russian newspaper was found not guilty of inter-ethnic incitement by a court in Riga, Latvia. Aivars Garda, publisher of the newspaper “DDD”, and two of these employees, faced fines if they had been found guilty in the two year old case. The paper has published articles referring to Jews as “kikes” and containing numerous derogatory statements about Russians living in Latvia. Past attempts to sanction the paper and its publisher under the country’s anti-incitementucsjucsjucs statutes have failed. Latvian courts have successfully applied anti-incitement laws only in two cases in which the accused were perpetrators of violence who happened to use racist language during an assault attack. No publisher of anti-Semitic or racist propaganda has been successfully prosecuted under these laws, which the prosecutors in the Garda case admitted were difficult to apply.
Date: 28/05/07
Posted: 06/06/07
