Re:Check debunks claim Latvia banned eight Raimonds Pauls songs

Latvia has not banned eight songs by composer Raimonds Pauls, LSM’s Re:Check fact-checking project reported. The claim arose from a parliamentary speech and was later amplified by political parties and a Russian state news agency.

During the Saeima’s second reading of amendments to the Law on Electronic Mass Media, National Alliance MP Artūrs Butāns proposed banning the broadcasting of musical works created by people subject to international or national sanctions. The proposal was supported by 53 MPs, while 16 voted against it.

Opposition came mainly from the Latvia First party and former members of the Stabilitātei! parliamentary faction.

Latvia First MP Edmunds Zivtiņš then claimed in parliament that several songs by Paul had recently been banned because the poet who wrote the lyrics, Voznesensky, belonged to the “wrong nationality”. He appeared to be referring to the Russian Theatre in Riga named after Mikhail Chekhov.

However, the theatre’s sales and marketing manager, Madara Sleže, told Re:Check that nobody had banned the songs. The theatre independently checks the sanctions status of Russian authors and has publicly stated its position against the war in Ukraine.

For that reason, some of Paul’s songs were not included in the programme of the concert “I Feel Good With You”. The decision was not connected with the Riga City Council, as Zivtiņš had suggested.

The authors and performers of the songs mentioned in the claim are not on sanctions lists, so the proposed legal changes could not apply to them. The planned ban is intended to cover war glorifiers and would apply only to broadcasting on radio.