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

Some of my best friends really ARE black

Many Russian-speakers in Estonia may be finding themselves in the unlikely position tonight of saying those very words. You see, Doudou Diène*, the UN's man on racism mentioned in the previous post, has caused a bit of a stir. Less than two days after being assured by the prime minister that such things are officially frowned upon in the country, he has come out and slammed the state's record on discrimination.

Several articles appeared online in quick succession after Diène spoke at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs today, including UN rapporteur concerned about discrimination and Diene: Language Inspectorate seems harsh. He claimed that the Estonian government paid no attention to discrimination as an issue and failed to listen to the citizens on whose behalf it purports to work.

Diène also highlighted the sticking point of citizenship, and pointed out that the very existence of a Language Inspectorate is viewed by many as discriminatory in nature. “The fact that there are still people living in Estonia who have no citizenship status is evidence enough that there are serious problems,” he said. “The system as a whole needs to be reviewed.”

However, it was the Special Rapporteur's recommendations regarding the language situation in the country that proved most controversial (and which have, predictably, incited the biggest backlash). Diène insisted that with the Russian minority forming such a major part of Estonian society, Russian should be given national language status.

“Estonia needs to move from a defensive position to one that is more multicultural,” he advised. “If 30 percent of the people in society are Russian speakers, it's not wise to ignore the fact.” He nevertheless conceded that requiring citizens to be able to speak Estonian was perfectly understandable, and that everyone in the country should do so.

While Diène pulls no punches, he certainly throws a lot of them. A summary of one of his reports states: "The members of foreign communities and national minorities who spoke to Diène explained, often with great emotion, how they experienced on a daily basis racism, discrimination, a xenophobic atmosphere, a feeling of loneliness within the population and fear of certain institutions." And that was about Switzerland (see link below). Seems no one is immune, however different their circumstances.

Still, for reasons of history alone, it's never going to happen. Russian being adopted as a national language alongside Estonian, I mean. Harri Tiido, someone high up in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has already come out denouncing the UN guru's findings, pointing out that everything Diène has said is purely his opinion, and that none of his recommendations are binding - they are simply that: recommendations.

"He went looking for discrimination and he found it," Tiido countered tonight in a presumably rather hastily organised interview on Eesti Raadio. "It's all about how you perceive things. Just because one person thinks they're being discriminated against doesn't mean you're dealing with discrimination in any legal sense."

Tiido alleges that Diène twisted the few tangible facts he was presented with into a nationwide epidemic of racism and xenophobia. "Of course there are pockets of racism in Estonia - we all know what's been going on in Tartu. When I spoke privately to Diène, I told him that was a case of a group of skinheads we know about and whose numbers are relatively small, but by then he'd already decided what he was going to say."

In a fairly typical response to someone championing the rights of minorities in a country where they tend not to enjoy any, Tiido concluded by saying that the Senagalese envoy had taken a very one-sided view of the local situation: “Talking to Diène, it was obvious he feels that any group that constitutes a minority has certain rights. But in thinking that way he forgets that the majority have rights too, and that in fighting for the rights of minorities, the rights of the majority have to be respected as well.”

But why is granting rights to minorities always interpreted by the majority as the loss of their own?

http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/swissinfo.html?siteSect=43&sid=7662246

*now with an è!