March 25 is celebrated annually in Latvia as the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Communist Genocide. On this day in 1949, about 43 thousand people from Latvia were deported to Siberia.
«The legislative basis» for deportation were the top-secret decisions of the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated January 29, 1949 and instructions issued in February by the Ministry of State Security « Regarding the procedure for the deportation of certain categories of residents from the Latvian SSR, Lithuanian SSR and Estonian SSR».
Vilis Latsis, as Chairman, signed the decision of the Council of Ministers of the Latvian SSR of March 17, 1949. Military units of the Ministries of State Security and Internal Affairs received a top-secret order №0068 to carry out the deportation of the population from the Baltic countries, codenamed «Priboy».
The deportation began on the night of March 24, 1949. From March 25 to 28, about 43 thousand people, more than 2% of the pre-war population of Latvia, were deported to places in «special settlements» (mainly in the areas of Krasnoyarsk, Amur, Irkutsk, Omsk, Tomsk and Novosibirsk). Among them were more than 10 thousand children under 16 years of age. Women and children under 16 made up 73% of deportees.
Today in Riga there is an entire museum complex dedicated to the period of Soviet presence in Latvia, – Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. And on March 25, state flags in mourning are hung throughout the country every year. Commemorative events and concerts are held in Riga – minute of memory at Shkirotava station, a procession of memory from the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia to the Freedom Monument with the laying of flowers.