MOSCOW, February 6. /TASS/. A Latvian human rights activist advocating the rights of Latvia’s Russian-speaking population, Alexander Gaponenko, has been expelled from neighbouring Estonia, a Russian human rights activist said on Friday.
""Human rights activist, Alexander Gaponenko, who is President of Latvia’s Union on Non-citizens, was detained in Parnu. After a six-hour interrogation he was told that he had been banned from entering Estonia since June of the last year," said Alexander Brod, a member of the Russian president’s council on human rights and development of civil society.
After the interrogation, Gaponenko, according to Brod, was taken to the border between the two countries and is now heading to Latvia.
Earlier on Friday, Brod said that Gaponenko had been detained by (Estonia’s) security service and taken to an undisclosed location. The Russian human rights advocate said he resented Estonia’s actions and would inform European human rights structures about such instances.
Gaponenko, the President of Latvia’s Union on Non-citizens, is reputed as a champion of the rights of Latvia’s Russian-speaking population. "Jointly with our Moscow-based human rights bureau, he monitors violations of the rights of Russian-speakers and is being persecuted for that," Brod said. "And as it looks now, not only in Latvia, but in neighbouring Estonia as well.".