every year the top news and headlines from around the world this is our team let's get right to those headlines right now polls and russians united in grief as it has been a year since president lech kaczynski and ninety five other members of the polish political elite died in a plane crash in western russia commemoration services have been held in the side of the disaster. colonel gadhafi forces have launched a major off until against the rebel held city of the move in the most easterly

point in three weeks african leaders are meanwhile meeting in march to try to broker a peace deal and plan to travel to meet with rebels and to tripoli to meet with government representatives. and top financial minds gather in an iconic american town to discuss what went wrong with the world's economy and where it needs to go to avoid a repeat placing the dollar as a reserve currency and be increased to all of the emerging markets are among the main targets. coming up in about thirty minutes time and my colleague carrie johnson will be here with a full look at your news but right now latvia was once a part of the soviet union it gained independence about twenty years ago our special report next a look at how the country has developed since the. it seems blanched used independence day it's pomp and fanfare good chance of any other

public holiday in the country on this day the republic's top leaders gathered so late in the freedom monument in latvia's capsule riga. informal events like the torch for sessions held in the evening of the same day people who see themselves as the country's true patriots marched through streets closed to traffic for the occasion the perceptions old and eyes by the radical nationalist posse known as all from latvia. however many people don't identify themselves with the festivities they are russian speaking residents who make up nearly forty percent of the country's population half of them have not yet received citizenship rights.

let me lindemann is a columnist for several months in newspapers you'll soon vista gates cases of public interest and publishes reports on them but even though vladimir holds a laugh in pasco it is technically not a fully fledged citizen of his own country. not with the passport cover bears a unique inscription the look that would be written in latvian it says your passport of a non-citizen closer reserve note the lead role is more on the main pitch in the english translation it reads daily and spends hours since last for some times we are called just that aliens like we are from another planet even for your point of international law we are treated as such just mr president there are something like four hundred thousand such people in latvia that have soaked through such. mansfield became an independent state in one thousand nine hundred one after seceding from the soviet union. barely one month later the country's parliament

passed a resolution officially dividing the republic's population into citizens and so-called non-citizens. the latter were denied voting rights they could not be elected to bodies of state or thorazine or work in government departments. this applied to not only those who settle down in the country after nine hundred forty but their descendants to. gain truth is i don't want to be a second class person i want to be a citizen of the country where a live in the complete. any known citizen is free to try to naturalize the vent they need to pass exams on the country's history and show the command of the state language and the national anthem if after submitting over necessary papers africans then need to wait for about a year before they get a cherished citizens passport. many people fail to go through the procedure that

the milliner meant for one was not even allowed to see those exams. for the past five years and i spent three of them outside lot of year why they didn't accept my papers but that excuse was absolutely unlawful was. my fight for citizenship rights and never and larry even stage a sit in in this building i spent a day here and refused to leave it after office hours and then the police force me out. there was a time when victor durgan off a nice to taste and valdez samplers a trauma surgeon who worked in the same hospital. now zach loses latvia's president though the north is a member of latvia's and the fascist committee. who is also a possibility i can't bear to see the revival of naziism unluckier i can see it with the naked eye the result of all upsets me most of all is that so-called

democratic europe closes its eyes to the revival of not as we will propose a code word was. on march sixteenth nineteen forty three during the second world war the latvian legion was formed. thousands of volunteers in the country signed up to fight for the nazis. off independence every year on this date legion veterans have been officially committed to hold a parade in central region. in two thousand and five because the target often several other hand the fascists clans and prison rape stood in the way of marching legionnaires. the police dispersed all the empty fascists and let the s.s. veterans put the flowers at the freedom monument. crosses the. we believe in

a free country fascists and their followers have no right to bring flowers to a symbol of the state if the state doesn't see itself as a nationalist was. still our actions were in line with the united nations resolution calling for resistance to all forces that promote the waffen s.s. . officers. some fourteen thousand veterans living in latvia today forts in the soviet army during. to. give kenichi convincing was a paratrooper event. as he moves to the monument commemorating the soviet soldiers who lost their lives in the war to make sure the nobody sees his medals. a law passed back in one nine hundred ninety one pounds the public display of soviet symbols. but. the attitude to us is just a bowman about weevils there was even a case where a uniformed veteran riding on

a bus on victory day had to leave because the driver stopped the bus and said he wouldn't budge unless the man's that i don't. really. the monument to soviet soldiers in riga was blown up in one thousand nine hundred eighty it was later restored to the act and he masterminded by egos. he was sentenced to a brief term in prison. and now he's again free to walk about central riga together with his son and openly discuss the fate of the monument. it's a myth that some people this is a monument to me it's a disgrace to the latvian nation. the boy is nothing that should be simply pulled down to symbolize we are no longer occupied. in the year when we go to fish can blow up the monument another event occurred that course

the world's attention. former soviet past has done vassili kononov had been brought before a latvian court to face criminal charges face actions and world war two ended it a little late this is the order of lenin only gave it to me for blowing up sixteen german trains when i was a partisan issue krishna traditional. in more than latvia the ex parties and was declared an enemy and spent almost two years behind bars. for taking part in the killing of local volunteers they were helping the germans. kononov was acting on a decision taken by parties on tribunals and nine hundred forty three. when radical nationalists came to power after the regime change their lackeys started a massive campaign against intel fascists or people who had fought in the entire

hitler coalition they were all to review the old can of the war in order to whitewash naziism and fascism as usual for she is a. ivers garda is leader of a political organization called the national front of lance via the front publishers a newspaper founded by him. that's weekends and during public holidays volunteers hand out free copies to anyone willing to read the paper. its name contains three d's they stand for d. occupation the colonized sation and d. russification. for a long time talk to god towards ethics at the academy of culture some of his former students are regular contributors to the newspaper. now under their chief and its guidance they spend no effort in a bid to oppose what they call russian dominance in latvia. ethnic lottery and make up fifty percent of the population of their own country at the other fifty percent

occupies backs about russia. you look at it it's necessary to create uncountable conditions for them but we need a situation where latvian society rejects occupiers moreover we need a law on the coal isolation we must say to each of them the schools we give you a deadline to get out of here that's. cameron north a british filmmaker decided to make a personal investigation into. the into ethnic relations between russians and latvians. he shot a documentary called latvia in hitler's footsteps way draws uncomfortable parallels between present day latvia and nazi germany. during the second world war and of that. the most. of it

altogether should. be rather. i'm on board and i. would like to say it's nothing that the languages are the same as they have. your speak latvian the things about it in some rights and that if you're not a citizen. of the trades and the combination of things where you are discriminated against because you're in pure. beauty alex sanz mother is latvian but his father is russian he has a perfect command of both languages. he received an excellent education both as an engineer and as a journalist his son me is a school people. papa tell me what the sentence means. is often at the last when he tries to figure out his math textbook it's written in

latvia. the internet translator says it means headline well yes that's a possibility. a country schools were formed in the middle of the past decade. russian textbooks were hastily replaced with latvian ones. now more than half of the subjects in russian language schools are supposed to be taught in latvian. for those who've who never russians ages with a poor command of the levee languished teach such difficult subjects as the medics physics and chemistry were to russian school children it brings misery which are both teachers and students with even with within your tenure. in the course of education reform nearly all old textbooks were revised and many russian language schools closed down numerous protests tanks had no effect the decisions of latvia's education ministry were final. so far inspectors haven't shown up in many russian

schools and all subjects are still taught in russian. math fin language textbooks approved by the education ministry can be seen in full view and they are only for show. militia cough is the first russian mayor of riga since independence twenty years ago he too had to close schools down including schools for russian speaking students but it didn't lead to any actions of protest in that instance schools were shot solely for economic all rather demographic reasons half of the classrooms in one third of all schools had no pupils. morgan freeman. many of the decisions taken by the previous mayor were largely politically motivated that was the basis for decisions about whether schools should be closed down rules when we merge schools we make a great deal of effort to accommodate all the children in the new building since we

also do all we can to retain jobs for the teachers always most but in the old days they just closed girls down and that was a lapse. probably from. the fact that the russian was elected mayor of the latvian capital in the summer of two thousand and nine surprised many politicians analysts put it down to the economic crisis. those who had felt it. severe impact we're not taking as much notes of the nationality of a politician as they used to. use going to work if in the early one nine hundred ninety s. they have not made the mistake of dividing the people into citizens of them known citizens would be because the politicians would have been compelled to talk about the economy social issues and structural reforms instead of harping on the theme of latvians and russians every two or four years will be much and we would have been able to deal with pressing issues much earlier and much more efficiently or still have to contend with economic issues corruption and many other things.

despite its small size there was schools of major industrial plants in soviet latvia. three of them which employ between ten and fifteen thousand workers each specialized in electronics. another one made minivans which were used as ambulances throughout the soviet union. today their production line stand idle. factory workers an engineer is going to small business. plant fears highly skilled professionals have left the country in search of a job. world

. careen you the latest in science and technology from around russia. we've got the future covered. under the soviets this factory provided jobs for twelve thousand workers it made radio sets radio cassette players and tape recorders to cater to the needs of people across the soviet union. by the late one nine hundred eighty s. several plans making radio an electronic equipment had been set up in latvia they were the soviet union's most advanced enterprises with the will of the girl in

soviet times i worked in a similar story for about fifteen years ago of course only for the break up of the serbian any of what they were close to eight hundred employees in the design bureau where i myself was employed where you have legacy what's left of it's almost burned out of only one designer working here though. when lanphier achieved independence the republic's government began closing down its industrial giants the new regime expected more than compact and mobile enterprises to replace the old sluggish and largely outdated soviet factories but they were never built in adequate numbers. yeah during the first five years of independence many enterprises were turned into script measure overcommit levy has sold it off cheap in lived off the money real estate and land were also soldiering this time which was a somewhat biggest source of funds during another five year period he will probably

have to rely on lines just before the country join the european union an avalanche of capital and low interest credit came here when they were not meant to develop production before instead they were channelled into land and real estate as a result would wind up in the situation. similar process is were going on in agriculture under the soviet government latvian collective farm supplied the republic with basic foodstuffs today half are imported. from spain and it's a matters that from the netherlands. these are from spain the key tempus from the netherlands. you'd be hard put to find to mystically produced vegetables here true pineapples don't grow the least onions were already being grown in lecture when the netherlands did not yet exist. after the declaration of

independence the land in government downsized agriculture and dated on individual farms the land belonging to collective farms was given back to form a owners all their descendants under a restitution plan. but most of them simply didn't bother to get into the difficult business of farming and instead preferred to sell off the newly acquired land mortgage it. in your little has been abandoned in the farms sense that police have already abandoned about sixty percent of them was a young people not keen to go back to the countryside here some get an education others find a chart and school brought to make commitments of things that. the village of qana billy is in let's go earlier one of the country's poorest regions local peasants used to regard themselves almost as urban dwellers they lived in flats with almost

no i mean it seems now one in every two flats is vacant. the local boiler house plant doesn't work the few people who still live here have to heat their homes with firewood. sometimes i fetch firewood once a day sometimes i do it twice a day and then i don't do it for three or four days my grandchildren here me a helping hand when they were little i would bring firewood by cart. and fisa has five children none of them live in latvia now they're trying to make money in western europe. and pieces spends a pension to feed her grandchildren she likes talking about her big family which is now scattered around the world that the world would think this is my daughter to give me a that's. in the high yield. and here is

a good lama and good company in the ideas that is my granddaughter play when i can i went to london to work there she left these little things in my care this boy was one year old and that one was in the third grade. their dad god knows where so i raise them on my own. people have no jobs towns and villages are becoming deserted pig sties encounter sheds a collapsing on the fields overgrown with weeds. this is how each morning began in victoria more and once until two thousand and eight. flats in a nineteenth century building in the old parts of riga was once considered prestigious poor young people are spent on the move they paid back of course.

and after latvia declared independence old houses were given back to their former owners and their restitution plan. they were quick to realize the knowledge in an apartment house was difficult. selling a building itself was easy but dealing with tenants was the main hurdle. a standard solution was that the new owners simply made sure that the building forced into a state of total disrepair and then its tenants were evicted under a court ruling. today three years later there isn't any electricity in the house where victoria used to live she gave up and rented a small flat in a new building a school and i have to visit my old apartment regularly to see if everything is an order that because the landlord has a habit of breaching and replacing the locks on the doors i also take some of my new methods with me. but the tenants of the house have seen the landlords only once

since they filed a lawsuit against him in two thousand and six so far their attempts to win their case have been unsuccessful the landlord lives in germany he came to llanview for the first time to receive a properties as if it. the land in central riga is the most expensive in the country. this huge trading center is the private property of a no we've been building company. is the most profitable pieces of land in lanphier and builds hotels and supermarkets that. for us now is the best time to invest has been very profitable. plus the poor but they also have what they call the grey or colony so that this is not the relief over an open this that this that. after a lengthy join the european union in two thousand and four the economist started to warn of a new threat. they maintain that there are public might lose its economic sovereignty

. about seventy percent of its farmland belongs to foreign investors the country's fiscal system depends on foreign banks. doing of wreckage here today scandinavian capital controls some seventy or eighty percent of the country's banking capitals can denounce this means it controls just as much of its financial system with it clearly regrettably the nation has lost its ability to work and when manufacture things use a lot of it when latvia was on the point of leaving the soviet union it was one of its most advanced territories with zero debts lou in gold today the picture is the oldest expression a brother got. in january two thousand and nine mass protests sway the latvian capital. the world economic crises had a huge impact on the country's economy people demanded the resignation of the

government when it could stabilize the situation. moreover pensions look cuts as well as salaries and social dimensions. these groups you do the crisis is the result of the country's split into twenty years ago people used to only that's why after the nation plays no part in the country's life political or otherwise of this is one cause of the great crisis we are going through because one way or the working. according to european statistics that is the poorest country in the european union today. as local nationalists look to blame russian speaking nonresidents people are leaving the country in large numbers in search of a better life. clashes population has shrunk by more than fifteen percent since independence according to latvia as foreign policy institute e.c.u.

some twelve thousand people leave the country for good. the u.k. is their most popular destination. the british filmmaker cameron north described the problem in his documentary. with a laugh in some of the u.k. . firstly one of the things is the economy enough. and life wealth is much harder but good living partly because the nationals i'm in mad about nash some of them hurting the economy another reason is that they get. social riots in the u.k. . it's now been twenty years since latvia jeev sovereignty. but still independence day its most celebrated holiday and the freedom monument its main

national icon aliens the heart of the country's population.