All hail the Chief Architect!

In the 1000 words of a recent report on a "British Estonia Chamber of Commerce"* seminar, The Baltic Times has pointed out what most of us already know: that amongst other things, modern architecture in Tallinn is uniformly ugly. Joel Alas reports.

Tallinn City Council’s chief architect has revealed a worrying snapshot of the city’s development – there are no controls over building aesthetics, public transport expansion plans are dependent on European Union funding, and authorities prefer a “self-regulating” traffic system to road expansion.

Endrik Mänd said the council had little power to encourage or direct development, but relied on developers to drive the city’s future. He added that there were no plans for the construction or expansion of roads - the city preferring a “self regulating”* system where pressure points are allowed to build as a way of deterring drivers. “There should be problems... Drivers will learn to avoid certain areas. If we widen certain roads we just invite drivers,” he said.

Mänd also revealed why many new buildings are being created with little architectural vision: the city’s building act contains no mention of aesthetics. “We have no legal support to say no to a building because it is ugly,” he said. “It’s just a question of persuasion.”

www.baltictimes.com/news/articles/18891/
*note the inconsistent use of a) correct titles and b) hyphens

Beating a retreat

In the aftermath of a Postimees exclusive this week uncovering the barbaric treatment of the drunk and disorderly at Hotell Viru's classy Cafe Amigo - deplorable scenes of victims bound hand and foot being beaten for extended periods in dingy back rooms by thuggish security staff - there has been a call in such newspapers as the Helsingin Sanomat for Finns to boycott the hotel.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

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!

Some of my best friends are black

Two days after prime minister Andrus Ansip assured Doudou Diene - the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia and related intolerance, himself from Senegal - that although racism is not unknown in Estonia it is denounced at the highest levels comes news of yet another local attack on a black student.

"Racism is condemned in Estonia in the strongest terms," Ansip said, adding that Estonia has been a cultural melting pot throughout its history, and remains so today, with 120 different nationalities represented in the country. "And the state will do everything it can to ensure that Estonia is a good home for these minorities in the future, too."

He and his government might want to concentrate on the present, though: September has seen another black student attacked by nationalist skinheads in Tartu, the educational heartland of the nation and self-proclaimed 'City of Good Thoughts' (which, given a better translation of heade mõtete linn would be 'city of good ideas', makes me wonder whether the irony is lost on them in any of this).

Ansip would praise Eesti Päevaleht Offline for the censorious line they take on the matter: "It goes without saying that the idiocy of considering someone lesser than yourself purely on the basis of the colour of their skin should have no place in a civilised society. One black student is worth a million times more to Estonia than a gang of narrow-minded, egg-headed, fatherland-venerating high school dropouts.

"Why, you're asking? But let me ask you: did this student come to Estonia to live it up on the generous unemployment benefits? Or because of the thousands of euros he could stuff his overalls with in some blue-collar job? Or so he could hijack a plane from Raadi airfield and fly it into Tartu's one and only highrise tower? No. He came here to get an education. A foreigner came to Estonia to get an education! That's a real I bow to you to the people who have managed to build up the kind of educational institutions that entice people to come here to study from far-off places. But if they're subjected to a hail of stones as soon as they get here, all they'll take away with them is a view of Estonia as some tiny, backward, xenophobic state."

Of course, if it weren't for the skinheads, they would never get that impression.

http://www.postimees.ee/260907/esileht/siseuudised/285521.php

http://www.epl.ee/artikkel/401839

What do Edgar Savisaar and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have in common?

They both deny what is blatantly obvious to just about everyone else in the world.

A couple of days after the preposterous Persian president insisted there are no such things as homosexuals in Iran, our mayor and saviour has made the [far less offensive but just as wilfully blinkered] claim, to all intents and purposes, that there is no such thing as underage drinking in Estonia. Or at least that if there is, they're not buying their alcohol from anywhere that shouldn't be selling it to them.

The issue kicked off in the last few days when it emerged that a check-out operator working at Prisma in the Kristiine shopping centre had sold a couple of cans of beer to some 17-year-olds. Hardly the most heinous of crimes, you might think, but it has since cost the supermarket its liquor licence - due in no small measure, I suspect, to Edgar Savisaar sanctioning such a move in the media.

Makes you wonder what City Hall's going to do when every shop and supermarket in Tallinn is found to be selling fags and booze to teenagers, something Northern Police Prefecture head honcho Raivo Küüt has gone on public record as describing as 'out of control'. Of course, you have to believe that's actually the case, and that the city's police know what they're talking about. Our Itkar does not.

"I'm sure the case of Kristiine Prisma is an exception to the rule," he said. When quizzed on the degree of justice that would be brought to bear on a store not caught selling beer to the almost-of-age but, say, vodka to a 13-year-old, Savisaar gave the kind of answer that is the verbal equivalent of sticking your head in the sand. "Impossible," he stated. "But if it were, if a 13-year-old were to be sold vodka in Tallinn, City Council would have to have a serious discussion about it."

You have to feel sorry for Prisma, since they're very clearly being made an example of here, but in a totally pointless and unsustainable way that quite possibly also has no basis in law. I'm not making excuses for the check-out operator who failed to ask for ID, and I'm not saying that 17-year-olds drinking beer isn't an issue. But there are much more effective ways of making your point than reacting in such a knee-jerk manner with your eyes closed to the heart of the problem.

A Single Nation. A Million Voices. An Unstoppable Dream.

Here is a link to the website promoting the documentary The Singing Revolution. A user called Tanvir seems determined to advertise it in response to everything I say, so I might as well head him/her/it off at the pass and devote an entire post to it. If you were wondering, it is rather good. (The documentary, I mean, not the website.) It is for this reason alone that I am pandering to a spam merchant.

http://www.singingrevolution.com/cgi-local/welcome.cgi

Estonia are the new Hooky World Champions!

Continuing the trend of vaguely linked posts, today's Eesti Päevaleht highlights the results of a UNICEF report issued late last week which reveal that Estonia leads the world in high school truancy.

Specifically, as many as 45% of students in Year 8 maths classes are skipping class. Or at least they were in 2003, which is when the figures date from (and which begs the question: why did it take them four years to write the report?).

Of course, officials are scoffing at the numbers being thrown about. Someone from the Ministry of Education the paper managed to get hold of claimed that the figures in the UNICEF report were not based on any statistical data, only to admit that that's because no such data exists. At least, not in the MoE.

School principals are also frowning upon the report's findings, stressing that the 10% of students who are dropping out of school altogether is a much bigger problem, and pointing out that while there is a problem with truancy, it is 'no worse than about 1 in 5'.

Even that says something though, I would have thought. I can't say I blame the kids myself, really, if Year 8 maths here is anything like Year 8 maths was when I was at school, and given the numbingly rigid structure of the education system in this country. If they had more say in what they learn, perhaps they would be more inclined to stick with it.

http://www.epl.ee/uudised/401257