RUSSIA
30
April 2007
Illumineerima
honk if you love… Russia?
At noon today (just a few moments ago), the honking began. Not sure how long
it’s supposed to last, but the Russians are honking while they drive 5 kmph
around town. That’s the kind of demonstration that I can understand and
respect. It seems, though, that not everyone knows what’s going on, since the
tram drivers seem to be joining in.
So, there were two nights of violence, but the police seem to have everything
under control now. It’s possible that things will be rowdy again tomorrow
night (May Day) and on May 9th (which is Victory Day in Russia — a national
holiday marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II)
The
EU And Ethnic Cleansing In Estonia
copydude
April 30th, 2007
One of the EU’s many accomplishments in facilitating NATO expansion has been
to ignore its own laws. Currently it is condoning a form of ethnic cleansing
against Russian speakers in Estonia. Just as it turned a blind eye to punitive
language laws in Latvia.
As Amnesty International explains, in EU Estonia today, every third person is
a potential victim of discrimination.
The treatment of the ethnic Russian minority in Estonia is not only in
contravention of UN laws, the European Council’s Human Rights Charter and the
EU’s own Treaty of Amsterdam. It is also being effected in a manner
reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
Estonia’s ‘Language Directorate’ operates as the new brownshirts, disbarring
anyone with poor Estonian language skills from their jobs and rights. Ethnic
Russians are the new ‘untermenschen’. Yet it’s a form of ethnic cleansing that
the EU ‘warmly welcomed‘. This is really what is behind the current riots in
Tallinn and why the ‘Bronze Soldier’ became a rallying point.
It would not be the first time ethnic cleansing has taken place in Estonia. In
1934, there were 4,381 Jews in Estonia, with most living in Tallinn, the
capital city. By the end of 1942, there were no known Jews in Estonia.
During the war, an estimated 10,000 Jews were killed in Estonia after having
been deported to camps from elsewhere in Eastern Europe. In 1944, The Red Army
failed to liberate those who remained. The main concentration camps were
evacuated by sea to Danzig. Any who missed the boat were killed a few hours
before the Red Army arrived and fewer than 10 survived.
At this time, Estonia had its own SS fighting alongside the Nazis. Very
effectively, too. The battle of Narva was particularly gruesome for Russians,
losing 170,000 men. Certainly, the Red Army did not ‘liberate’ Estonia.
Estonian guerillas - the Forest Brothers - were still harassing the Soviets
until 1949. So, a monument to a Russian soldier was always inappropriate -
rather like erecting an RAF monument in Dresden. Balts were largely Nazi
sympathisers and many are still in holocaust denial. Though not all.
This is not the first soldier monument controversy. A monument to an Estonian
SS soldier was erected in Parnu in 2002.
Whether Estonia would have fared better under Nazi occupation than Soviet
Occupation is a tough one to call, to say the least. But it seems clear which
one Estonians would have preferred. And to be fair, they experienced both.
So now it’s payback time for ethnic Russians and the methodology is Nazi
style, with the novel variation of Russians being put in ‘no labour’ camps.
The brownshirts from the ‘Language Inspectorate’ turn up, announced or
unannounced, and recommend dismissal for anyone who isn’t an ethnic Estonian.
Here’s a typical mail to Amnesty International:
“I used to work as a taxi driver but lost my job thanks to the Language
Inspectorate. They call you to the transport commission for the slightest
infraction of the highway code where the Language Inspectorate is waiting for
you.Everything is well planned. They call only the Russian speakers. They can
sack you not because you are a bad worker, not because passengers have been
complaining but because you don’t know Estonian well. I have three children, a
mortgage and an alcoholic husband but nobody cares. I have to pay for language
courses and they are not cheap — two or three monthly salaries. I don’t have a
job and I cannot pay for the Estonian language courses. How am I going to
live? Isn’t this discrimination?”
Since March, the Language Directorate has tightened the screws, making people
who already have a language certificate re-sit a language exam and nullifying
the language certificates of those who fail a re-sit - which of course, is
guaranteed.
Amnesty International notes again:
People who were born and have lived all their lives in Estonia have not
been able to gain Estonian citizenship. They are deprived of the possibility
of working as state or municipal officials, meaning they are deprived of the
opportunity to contribute to their communities according to their potential.
The stateless and jobless ethnic Russians will inevitably become homeless and
be ‘disappeared’ like the Bronze Soldier. The Russians in the EU are the new
‘Jews’ and the EU continues to abandon basic human rights, in contravention of
its own citizenship laws, as it has done with ‘extraordinary rendition’ and
torture camps.
He’s Back.
Who’d A Thunk It
copydude
Almost before you can say ‘fascist’, the Estonians have hurriedly re-assembled
the Bronze Soldier and put him back up, albeit in a different location. They
even put out a live TV broadcast to tell the world.
That’s a very different story to Friday, when Government spokesman Martin
Jasko said the ‘unnecessarily divisive’ statue had ‘no place in the city
centre’ and was being removed to an ‘undisclosed location’.
One can observe that putting him back up was as precipitate as dismantling him
in the first place. There’s no guarantee his new location will be any less
provocative. More likely the opposite, given that a few war graves have been
desecrated in the ensuing controversy.
So, what might have been the pressures on the Estonian Government? They won’t
have been from the Russian minority in Estonia, a marginalised, powerless,
unemployed and eminently lock-uppable minority.
Over the weekend, condemnation came from from more than a few directions.
Notably from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the LA-based holocaust historians.
Russians in Russia spontaneously responded to the desecration of the war
grave. Supermarkets voluntarily stopped selling Estonian goods, while Moscow
Mayor Luzhkov called on institutions to freeze financial transactions with
Estonia.
Russia’s always amusing deputy speaker, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, offered to fund
a replica of the soldier to be installed across the street from the Estonian
embassy in Moscow. (Currently under siege from the equally entertaining Nashi
kids.)
Predictable stuff. And in all this, who is predictably absent? The EU, of
course. ‘It’s a local spat”, was the response, despite an urgent plea from
Finland to join the debate.
My previous ‘Ethnic Cleansing in Estonia‘ describes how the EU bent its
own rules to facilitate the passage of Estonia into the expanded NATO EU.
In terms of human rights, Estonia never
passed any normal rules for EU Entry
In terms of human rights, Estonia never passed any normal rules for EU Entry.
As ‘The Scotsman‘ notes today:
After regaining independence in 1991, Estonia gave automatic citizenship only
to people resident in the country before the annexation of 1941. This has left
the vast bulk of Russian-speakers, most of whom arrived or were born during
the Soviet period, as non-citizens.
Statistically, that’s a whole third of the population disadvantaged. But
according to the EU, and the Estonian Government, it’s one statue that’s
divisive.
The funny part is that Belgium - and Brussels - experienced the same kind of
language wars that divided and paralysed the country for decades. Now you
can’t buy a tin of beans in Brussels that isn’t packaged in two languages and
three are official. Are EU MPs so permanently out to lunch that they just
don’t get it? Or just pig ignorant?
April 30th, 2007
Estonia. A Minority Russian Speaks Up
copydude
The following is the comment received from a Russian speaker in Estonia.
You know, I am Russian, who lives in Estonia, I was born here and so was my
mother. I am a teacher of Estonian language in Russian Schools, I am a citizen
of Estonia and I have a child and husband.
I told you all that because Estonia is a very small country. It has a little
more than 1 million people, about 300,000 or more are Russians, at least
150,000 don’t have a citizenship and has no right to vote and other rights are
very limited for them. My husband, my mother, a lot of my friends are not
citizens, but they were born here! Is this legal? Where else in Europe (except
for Latvia) has such system? Maybe I don’t know
You know, it’s a hallmark of miserable people that their only joy in life
is to make other people more miserable than they are. Which may explain the
Estonian attitude to the even more miserable Russian minority. No one’s a
happy bunny in Estonia and now it’s only going to get worse.
Have I been to Estonia? Yes, of course, many times. And since I don’t speak
Estonian, I can vouch for the inadvisability of speaking even a few words of
Russian. I thought, all Estonians speak Russian, surely? Well, they might
understand it fluently. But open your mouth in Russian and you won’t get
served in many shops. If you ask directions, they’ll send you the wrong way
round. The best you can hope for is that Estonians will answer, in fluent
Russian, that they don’t speak a word of Russian.
So, it’s truly wonderful to be a tourist in Estonia. If they learned anything
from Russians, it’s how not to attract tourists. Which is pretty stupid for a
country which is dependent on revenue from tourism.
My favourite town in Estonia is Narva, a sick joke of town characterised by
concrete and barbed wire. Because it’s mostly a Russian speakers town, EU
funding does not penetrate here. And thanks to the Language Directorate, much
of the workforce is either unemployed or leaving for the UK to join the
jobless and soon-to-be exploited, cheap labour Poles in British
chicken-packing plants. Narva is another living tribute to the EU’s seedier
agenda.
But that’s not the point, is it. It’s unfortunate that Estonians haven’t quite
been able to gas all remaining Russians yet but, the main thing is that the
Estonian language and culture is now safe and protected. And you can really
see that working in Tallinn, with its Irish Pubs, Sushi bars, Pizza Huts and
German Bierkellers. (All menus and prices in English.) What a tribute to the
Estonian national heritage!
So why are they all still such a miserable bunch?
The Bronze Soldier has a new home
Foto: Marko Mumm
Estonia and Russia