On Thursday, 11 April, the Saeima supported in principle the Draft Law on the Amendments to the Law on Safety during Public Entertainment and Festive Events. The amendments will ban the use of flags, coats of arms, anthems and other symbols, including stylised ones, of the USSR, Latvian SSR and Nazi Germany also during public entertainment and festive events.

The amendments will also prohibit participants of public entertainment and festive events to contest Latvia’s independence and territorial integrity, to suggest violent overthrow of the existing order, to call for disobedience of laws, to spread war propaganda, to glorify or abet crime and to incite committing other offences that threaten the security and health of participants of the event and of other people.

Currently the ban applies only to participants of rallies, marches and pickets.

The Draft Law aims at ensuring that public entertainment and festive events are not used for promoting violence, hatred, Nazi, Fascist or Communist ideology or for spreading war propaganda.

Within the scope of the Law, a public event is a publicly accessible festive, commemorative, entertainment, sports or leisure event planned and organised by a natural person or legal entity in a public place regardless of its ownership.

The Saeima decided to deem the Draft Law as urgent, and it set 18 April as the deadline for submitting amendment proposals. It is planned to consider the Draft Law in the second reading on 25 April.

Saeima Press Service