Section 78 of the Criminal Law provides, as at 2017: (1) For a person who commits acts directed towards triggering national, ethnic, racial or religious hatred or enmity, the applicable punishment is deprivation of liberty for a term up to three years or temporary deprivation of liberty, or community service, or a fine.
[13] ECRI has noted recourse to racist expressions by politicians and media to remain a problem in its 2007 report, specifying two types of racist speech: first, geared against immigrants, certain ethnic group such as Roma and religious minorities including Jews and Muslims, and second, related to relations between Latvians and Russian-speaking population.
The same year, a scandal has erupted concerning expressions of the foreign minister Ģ. V. Kristovskis, criticised by his partner in the ruling coalition Aivars Lembergs stating "A contemporary human is incompatible with racism.
[16] At the ECRI high-level panel meeting in 2005, Jean-Yves Camus, a political scientist, has described racism as "a feature of daily life" in a case study of Latvia.
[18] Experts asked by the official newspaper Latvijas Vēstnesis in 2007, have considered racism not to be mass-scale or typical for Latvia's society in general.
[20] In 2008, the minister for social integration Oskars Kastēns has declared, that racism in Latvia is on a non-dangerous level,[21] and the chair of parliamentary human rights commission Jānis Šmits has said in a meeting with ECRI delegation, that hooliganism should not be confused with racism, which allegedly doesn't exist in Latvia (Šmits was contested by other participants of the meeting – leader of NGO Afrolats K. Ejugbo has called the problem of racism very acute, and expert from centre PROVIDUS M. Golubeva has called it to be more and more urgent), due to ethnic Latvians being a peaceful people.