Latvia names 28 recipients of its highest state honours

Latvia will award its highest state honours to 28 people, including cycling coach Igo Japiņš and conductor Māra Marnauza, LSM reports. The honours are the Order of the Three Stars, the Order of Viesturs and the Cross of Recognition.

The recipients include people working in medicine, education, culture and sport, as well as entrepreneurs, public figures, members of the National Armed Forces, national guardsmen, border guards and dog handlers. The Order of the Three Stars will go to eight people, while 11 people will receive the Order of Viesturs or its honorary badges.

Japiņš, a former cyclist and coach and former president of the Latvian Cycling Federation, will be appointed an officer of the Order of the Three Stars. The same honour will go to cardiologist Artis Kalniņš, head of the Cardiovascular Diseases Clinic at Riga East University Hospital.

Appointed knights of the order will include Inese Berķe, director of the Jēkabpils History Museum, and Māra Marnauza, a professor at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music and artistic director of the Balta women’s choir and Fortius chamber choir. Marnauza is also a chief conductor at the Latvian Song and Dance Festival.

Other recipients of the order include Eleonora Ieva Mičule, a longtime teacher at the Latvian school in Los Angeles, and Ilze Paleja, a psychologist and chair of the board of the Latvian SOS Children’s Villages Association. Guntis Konstants, a longtime stage construction technologist at the New Riga Theatre, and Daina Skrastiņa, a longtime medical assistant at the Taurene feldsher-midwife station, will receive the order’s first-class gilded honorary badge.

President Edgars Rinkēvičs and the Orders Chapter made the decision on October 26 under the State Awards Law. The awards ceremony will take place at Riga Castle on November 18.