A/HRC/7/19/Add.3 page 5 Introduction 1. At the invitation of the Government, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance visited Latvia (Daugavpils and Riga) from 20 to 24 September 2007. At the Government level, he held meetings with the Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Education and Science, the Special Assignments Minister for Social Integration, officials at the Ministry of Interior, including the Security Police, and the Ministry of Justice, and the Deputy Head of the Naturalization Board. He also met with the President of the Constitutional Court, the Head of the Human Rights and Public Affairs Committee of the Saeima (the Latvian Parliament) and the Ombudsman. 2. Apart from the agenda with the Government and State institutions, the Special Rapporteur also had extensive meetings with representatives of civil society organizations that are active in the realm of racism and xenophobia, minority communities and victims of racism and racial discrimination, both in Daugavpils and Riga. The Special Rapporteur also visited the Occupation Museum as well as the Latvian Ethnographic Museum in Riga. 3. The Special Rapporteur wishes to express his gratitude to the Government of Latvia for its cooperation and openness throughout the visit and in the preparatory stages. He also wishes to thank the United Nations country team in Riga, particularly the staff of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), for its outstanding support. I. GENERAL BACKGROUND A. Historical and political context 4. For many centuries, the territory that constitutes Latvia today has been an important trading crossroads in Europe, linking distinct civilizations, particularly Scandinavia and the Byzantine Empire, in what has been famously described in ancient chronicles as the “route from the Vikings to the Greeks”. The geographic position of the Daugava river also provided Western European traders with direct access to Russia, amplifying opportunities for cultural contact between the tribes that lived in the territory and the outside world. 5. An important episode in Latvian history was the arrival, in the twelfth century, of German traders and preachers who attempted to convert local pagan believers to Christianity. Local resistance led Pope Innocent III to send German crusaders to Latvia. These crusaders founded Riga in 1201 and conquered the territory, unifying the separate tribes under the Livonian Confederation. Due to its commercial importance, Riga quickly became the centre of the Baltic region, joining the Hanseatic League in the late thirteenth century. In subsequent centuries, Latvia was conquered by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Sweden, becoming part of Russia after the Great Northern War in 1700. 6. A nationalistic revival took place in the mid-nineteenth century, among intellectuals, but only gained momentum during the Russian Revolution of 1905. However, Latvia remained under Russian rule until the end of the First World War, gaining independence in 1918 when the Soviet Government renounced all claims to Latvian territory.