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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 37, Number 25. 25th September 1974

Baltic boob

Baltic boob

Dear Sir,

It has probably escaped the attention of most students that the NZ government recently stated its formal legal recognition of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' takeover of the Baltic states. This move was probably given little coverage by the press because, afterall — who's heard of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania anyway (except of course for some paltry 1500 Baltic refugees who escaped the horrors of foreign occupation in the second world war to come to NZ) — and who cares!

The Baltic states have been occupied by both USSR and Germany in the past few decades and the people suffered all the atrocities normally associated only with Nazi-ism. Germany was purged after the war and her ringleaders annihilated but the Russian leaders, whose acts were no better but just less publicised in the west, are still in power today, and are forcing their political ideologies down the throats of smaller helpless countries such as the Baltic states.

This is not only a gross deprivation of freedom but a stifling of one of the oldest surviving cultures. Latvian culture is studied throughout the world as its roots stretch far into antiquity — its language with its own alphabet is unique.

How the NZ government can possibly even consider accepting such Soviet actions is a mystery but the fact that Australia made the same move a few days before NZ gives us a clue, Although it is necessary to have Soviet/ Western harmony It is surely not necessary to go this far. Other western powers such as UK and USA have made no such move, realising the atrocities that Russia meets out to these countries and I would suggest that NZ is blatantly sucking up to the Soviet Union's ass in a grossly immoral manner.

I consider that it is a contradiction for NZ to accept this takeover by the USSR when at the same time it does not accept the relatively minor South African situation. Anyone who thinks this is an exaggeration only needs to read Sol or else go and ask any NZ Baltic citizen about his war experiences or the present ones of his relatives and friends who remain in their stricken home country.

In Australia, Baltic citizens staged widespread protests but obviously this is not enough, If NZ continues to follow Australia in such matters without any consideration of her moral obligations and if NZ students apathetically accept this, than I just hope we don't go self-righteously pointing the finger at other international atrocities.

A Latvian Student