80 thousand British tourists visited Latvia last year and the British embassy in Riga is aware only of about ten incidents involving Britons, who have earned bad reputation in Latvia for misbehaving.
British Ambassador to Latvia said:
"In terms of the old story about the British trouble-makers - we had about ten incidents last year but we are talking about ten incidents out of 80,000 tourists. I regret every incident which involves the British behaving badly in Riga. I have discussed it many times with the prime minister and the president, and others. They are relatively minor incidents. It is up to the Latvian city authorities and the police to enforce the law. If people misbehave, they must be arrested or fined. We at the embassy issue travel advice and urge people to behave. If they are arrested or fined, then there is nothing we can do as an embassy to help them, they have to abide by the laws of the country," said the ambassador.
"The other part of this is that there have also been incidents of tourists being ripped off, paying a thousand dollars in a bar and things like this. We are also working with the Riga city authorities and the police to try to address that issue. Because it is equally serious, and my job is to protect Britons coming to Riga. If they get arrested, my consular staff have to go and visit a person in prison. If they are ripped off, I have the responsibility to try to find out who is doing this and if the police are being sufficiently active in making sure that the bars and clubs are charging proper prices. I don't know whether it's just ripping off or organized crime, but again it is for the police and the city authorities to do this," said the ambassador.
Overall, the problem gets blown out of all proportion, said the ambassador. "It's extremely small scale, and we are working very closely with the city authorities and the police to keep it under control," he said.
The ambassador said there were two "types" of tourists - middle-aged people, who want to look at the architecture, and drink nice wine and have nice meals, and the young people, who always want to travel and find new places to go, who are interested in the city life.
By LatviansOnline.Com
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80000 UK citizens visited Latvia last year, embassy aware of only 10 incidents 