Touching a nerve

Estonia has come in for a bit of criticism from people in high places of late and it seems the natives don't like it. After a good two weeks of being slapped on the wrist, Ingvar Bärenklau spoke out on behalf of the people of his besieged nation yesterday in a front page piece that saw the ordinarily temperate Postimees abandoning all pretence of objective journalism.

In an article entitled Three foreign integration experts teach the government how to get on with Russians, Bärenklau states: "Although the West has never seriously reproached Estonia at the political level for its citizenship and minority policies, envoys from international organisations are bombarding the country with peremptory recommendations for the simplification of its citizenship procedures."

He then adds: "A fortnight ago the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly president René van der Linden riled the public with his Kremlin-minded rhetoric, while last week the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had to listen to the views of sour-faced Senegalese UN Special Rapporteur Doudou Diène on the need for a transition to a multicultural society, which inevitably brings with it the instatement of Russian as a national language."

Bärenklau goes on, highlighting the patently ridiculous recommendations made this week by Thomas Hammarberg, the current Commissioner for Human Rights in Strasbourg, that Estonia should stop requiring Russian-speaking pensioners to take citizenship exams and should grant automatic citizenship to babies born in the country to non-citizens.

I particularly like the undemonstrative use of the term 'sour-faced' in relation to our Doudou. Bärenklau's below-the-belt approach is not uncommon though in the light of all this criticism: similar articles have been appearing all over the place. An editorial on Delfi summarised the barrage of fire the country has come under thus: "You nasty little Estonians, you treat the Russians very shabbily. You have to make concessions to them, and lots of them, and right now"!

It's clearly not just the journalists who think these foreign smartarses should take their precious advice and shove it, though: a Gallup poll conducted on behalf of Postimees yesterday revealed that 80.01% of respondents feel their recommendations shouldn't be taken into account because "they don't know what they're talking about".

Awkward situation; that goes without saying. But as someone once put it, giving the newly first-class majority the right to dictate the terms on which the fallen second-class minority can be seen to be equal is like giving the family of a murder victim the right to commute the killer's death sentence to life imprisonment: either way they're still not going anywhere, and as long as there is resentment, there will always be stigma.

http://www.postimees.ee/031007/esileht/siseuudised/286932.php

http://www.delfi.ee/archive/article.php?id=17065166&categoryID=9738762&ndate=1191358800