Baltic States – CIS, EU – Baltic States, Latvia, Legislation, Society, Telecomunications

About 80 people staged the picket in front of the government building on Friday afternoon to protest the airing of the film for taxpayers’ money.

The protesters held posters with slogans in Latvian, Russian and English: “War psychosis – not for our money”, “BBC, stop spreading rumors about Daugavpils”, and the like.

Miroslavs Mitrofanovs, a representative of the Russian Union of Latvia, a political party that organized the picket, said in loudspeaker that the BBC film in question did not depict anything real, that it was falsification and created a distorted impression of Russian speakers, including those living in Latvia. Mitrofanovs said that the Latvian government should not have invested in the rights to broadcast such a film.

European Parliament member Tatjana Zdanoka (Russian Union of Latvia), who also took part in the protest, told the crowd that the film has been developed by American propaganda experts.

There were also residents of the eastern Latvian city of Daugavpils, including local officials, among the protesters, LETA observed.

The Russian Union of Latvia is upset over plans to show this "untruthful film which is inciting to ethnic hatred" for taxpayers’ money. LTV will air a film "aimed at residents of [southeastern Latvian city] Daugavpils, [eastern Latvian region] Latgale and Latvia’s ethnic Russian population", the Russian Union of Latvia said in a statement to the media.

The party claims that the BBC film depicts residents of Daugavpils and Latvia’s ethnic Russians as aggressors, terrorists and inciters of World War Three. The Russian Union of Latvia believes the film has been shot to justify the plans of the UK and NATO to increase military spending.

"There are no grounds to associate Daugavpils with violence and war," the party says.

BBC on February 3 aired a short feature film depicting a Russian invasion of Latvia. The film called World War Three: Inside The War Room plays out a scenario in which Russia has occupied 20 Latvian towns and cities near the Russian border in an attempt to support pro-Kremlin separatists ravaging the country.

According to the screenplay, when NATO leaders fail to decide on how to respond to the invasion, both the United States and Great Britain decide to send in their soldiers to counter the Russian force. Russia responds to this with a nuclear attack.

As reported, Latvian Television (LTV) aired the BBC film about Russia's invasion of Latvia on LTV1 channel on February 19th.