President says jail justified for online activity

While Canada deploys troops to Eastern Europe, analysts say Russia is taking the West into a virtual battlefield. Latvia’s response has raised the ire of civil rights groups.

“Russia’s information influence on Latvia is significant,” says Janis Sarts, director of a NATO think-tank that analyzes communications.

At the alliance’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, a team of 30 analyzes Russia’s TV and radio broadcasts, as well as robots that post messages on social media. Their goal is to find trends in “hybrid warfare” so countries like Latvia understand why many of their minorities believe Russia’s propaganda.

In one project, the centre analyzed coverage of the Malaysia Airlines flight that was shot down over Ukraine in July 2014, finding that Russian outlets carried 20 different explanations for what happened.

“Their whole notion is disorienting,” Sarts says. “It’s not about always believing the Russian side of the story; it’s about believing no one.”

In an interview, Latvian President Raimonds Vejonis says many citizens grew up in a Soviet school system that taught unflinching loyalty. “We still have to work with society for critical thinking.”

But the country has also attracted outcry from civilrights groups for blocking websites, and jailing citizens for posting satire.

In February, a court sentenced a film student to six months in jail for “incitement to destroy the independence” of Latvia, for starting an online petition to have the country join Russia, with a note saying it was a parody. In protest, a Riga man started a similar spoof petition, saying the country should join the U.S., prompting police to raid his home within days.

Latvia’ s parliament doubled down in April, creating five-year criminal sentences for those who “disseminate information against the independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and government of the Republic of Latvia.”

Vejonis says these sentences are a reasonable response to Russia’s concerted campaign of undermining Latvia through i ts statefunded radio stations and online trolls.

“According to our laws, you have problems if you are working an anti- constitutional way — even if you are speaking in an unconstitutional way,” he says. “If we will have any problems with human rights, we will be in the international court. We don’t have such cases.”