We, who have been granted the opportunity to live in a free and independent Latvia, must direct all our energy to ensure that Latvia is always free and strong, and that no one ever has to experience what the victims of repression and deportations of the communist regime endured, urged President Edgars Rinkevics.
On the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Communist Genocide, he stated that many, after experiencing repression and deportations under the occupation regime, could not speak at all, and this silence may be the most terrifying testimony of communist terror.
Eighty-five years ago, innocent residents of Latvia were expelled from their homes and taken away. On this day, there were also repressions against soldiers of the Latvian army in Gulbene, Litene, and other places in Latvia. Several hundred officers of the Latvian army were arrested and deported to Siberia, some of them were shot on the spot. The cities and villages of Latvia became empty and gloomy, Latvian songs fell silent, and national consciousness was severely undermined, the president notes.
"Mass deportation was not just a removal from home. Four out of ten deported died in exile. Those who returned to the territory of Latvia did not return home because their home was free Latvia, not a Soviet prison. Their dreams were shattered, families broken, goals and skills no longer mattered. For the Soviet authorities, what was important was that these people were in Siberia, and thus - undesirable. And they remained so until the very beginning of the 1990s, when Latvia restored its independence," Rinkevics reminds us.
According to the president, there are no words to make what happened un-happen, but we, who have been granted the opportunity to live in a free and independent Latvia, must direct all our energy to ensure that Latvia is always free and strong, and that no one has to experience such horrors in our time.
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