RIOT UPDATE

Last night I had dinner with the owner of the restaurant that was spared in the riot. It was just 60m from the severely attacked Parex Bank branch - where my friend works by the way....

The owner said that the jewelers opposite Parex Bank had also been left untouched. She had seen that many of the rioters had bought cobblestones in their rucksacks so they were prepared in advance. But some of them were apparently too drunk to stand let alone throw stones. She also said that she heard both Russian and Latvian voices amongst the boys.

One of the commentators has said that the riot at the Saeima was the work of Russians and even blamed Russia itself. But on further investigation I found that the first group to leave the rally and head for the Saeima was the Russian party and after they had passed the military police put up the roadblock to stop more people getting into the immediate vicinity of the building. I am sure that this is total coincidence but it does explain why most of those defending the Saima thought it was Russian inspired and why all the people I saw at the barricade were speaking Latvian. It shows how easy it is to draw wrong conclusions. I also saw a lot of the videos on YOUTUBE. As expected they show a lot of noise and pushing and shoving but very little real violence. The main focus appears to have been on the Saeima itself which could have been expected and against the police who certainly suffered a lot. Apart from the Saeima and the Parex Bank area in Smilsu Iela the rest of town apparently went virtually unscathed. There was certainly no sign yesterday that there had been a problem at all.