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A constitutional referendum on the "Amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia" was held on 18 February 2012. Proposed amendments included Articles 4, 18, 21, 101 and 104 of the Constitution of Latvia by adding the condition about Russian as the second official language, as well as prescribing two working languages — Latvian and Russian for self-government institutions.〔(Jarinovska, Kristine. "Popular Initiatives as Means of Altering the Core of the Republic of Latvia", ''Juridica International''. Vol. 20, 2013. p. 152 ISSN1406-5509 )〕 The referendum's question was "Do you support the adoption of the Draft Law "Amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia" that provides for the Russian language the status of the second official language?". According to the 2000 census, Russian was the native language of 37.5% and the second language of 43.7% of the residents. Since 2000, Russian has been regarded as a foreign language according to the Official Language Law. ==Background== In 2010, the National Alliance started to collect signatures to force a referendum on whether all publicly financed schools would have to use Latvian exclusively. By 9 June 2011, they had gathered 120,433 signatures of the minimum 153,232 signatures required, failing to force a referendum. Protesting against the National Alliance initiative, on 15 February 2011 the youth movement "United Latvia" ((ロシア語:''Единая Латвия'')), led by Eduars Svatkovs, announced the idea of making Russian an official language alongside Latvian. On 4 March 2011 "United Latvia", together with the newly created organisation "Mother Tongue" ((ロシア語:''Родной Язык'')), led by activist Vladimir Linderman (former leader of the Latvian branch of the Russian National Bolshevik Party), Yevgeny Osipov (leader of "Osipov Party"), and Aleksandrs Gaponenko (director of the Institute of European Studies, economist), started to collect signatures for a referendum petition. They gathered 187,378 signatures, forcing a referendum. The referendum initiators mentioned possible assimilation of minority children as the main reason to protest. One of the goals of this protest action was to slow down the ongoing process of National Alliance signature collecting. Those initiating the referendum to make Russian co-official argued: "In such case there is no other defense method than attack. The initiator of hysteria should be shaken strongly to stop hysteria." The referendum was held after the Saeima rejected the draft law "Amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia" supported by more than one-tenth of the voters during the Collection of signatures. At least half of the entire electorate has to vote Yes in the referendum in order for it to be valid (771,893). Legal scholars stated that beside statehood elements, the initiative would have influenced multiple basic human rights and general principles of law protected by the Constitution of Latvia, such as the right to preserve and develop the Latvian language and Latvian ethnic and cultural identity, to participate in the work of the state and of local government, and to hold a position in the civil service; the right to choose one’s employment and workplace freely; the right to education; the rights of a child; and the right to equality and non-discrimination, principles of proportionality, legal certainty, and legitimate expectations.〔 The referendum organisers did not deny that the main achievement would be to show a large number of Russian language supporters and the final goal would be to change the status of Russian from foreign to some legal (i.e. regional) in the future. Official status for Russian was requested due to fact that the Constitution and Official Language Law do not have any other definitions for language status other than making a language official. Amendments for granting any other status for Russian (i.e. regional) would have had a higher risk of rejection by the Constitutional Court thus cancelling the referendum.〔http://www.nasha.lv/rus/novosti/news/Interwie/46990.html〕 Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe High Commissioner on National Minorities Knut Vollebæk planned to visit Latvia after the referendum. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Latvian constitutional referendum, 2012」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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