Aftermath of The Bronze Night - Other Reaction

Other Reaction

Gerhard Schröder, former German Chancellor (socialist, SPD) and current chairman of a shareholders' committee of a gas consortium controlled by the Russian Gazprom, said that the removal was insulting to Russians who died fighting Nazi Germany:

"The way Estonia is dealing with the memory of young Russian soldiers who lost their lives in the fight against fascism is in bad taste and irreverent"

The Tajik Council of War Veterans condemned the removal of the statue, stating, "Estonian bureaucrats are behaving like fascists."

Katyn Committee (relatives of Polish officers, who were executed on the orders of the Soviet authorities in the village of Katyn) in Poland, said:

" suffered from the Soviet occupation, while Soviet monuments have always been the symbol of slavery and lies, as well as Russian chauvinism. The Katyn Committee expresses solidarity with the sovereign government of Estonia and approves its decision to remove the Soviet monuments, sites of the 'Red' empire. We are indignant at Russian official statements threatening to cut off diplomatic ties with Estonia."

On April 28 three large Russian supermarket networks: Seventh Continent, Kopeika and Samokhval banned all Estonian commodities.

The Mayor of Tallinn and the oppositional Centre Party chairman Edgar Savisaar condemned the disproportional use of force by the police stating that there is no explanation why several policemen should apply physical force against a handcuffed detainee. He also stated that the central government should compensate the city of Tallinn the losses caused by the unrest over the relocation of the monument. According the Savisaar the direct losses exceed 40–50 million Estonian kroons (2.5 – 3 million EUR) As a reaction to his statement (disapproved of by many leading Estonian politicians), the Estonian National Movement started to collect signatures on Internet for Mayor Savisaar's resignation.

On May 1, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has proposed to boycott everything related to Estonia for "actions taken against the Bronze Soldier Monument and graves of our soldiers". He said that Russian companies should cut their relations with partners in Estonia. "One should tell our business: stop contacts with Estonia. The country showed its negative, and I would say fascist face", the mayor said, adding: "No one will be able to re-write the history."

International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights:

"According to media reports as well as reports received by the IHF, police in some cases used disproportionate force against riot participants. Some protesters were reportedly hit with batons, beaten and mistreated after being taken into custody in a temporary detention facility established in a terminal at the Tallinn port. Some cases of apparent police brutality were documented by TV broadcasts and cell phone recordings.

The riots in Tallinn and other Estonian cities have served to highlight remaining problems relating to the integration of the country's Russian-speaking minority, which constitutes about one third of the 1.4 million residents. Despite a number of important legislative reforms since the first years of independence, this minority is still not officially recognized as a linguistic minority and continues to face discrimination and exclusion in everyday life, thus fostering frustration and resentment among its members. Many Russian-speakers still lack Estonian citizenship, Russian-language education has gradually been reduced and stringent language requirements restrict access to the labor market for Russian-speakers. "

The veteran politician and human rights activist Sergey Kovalyov writes in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza that Russia's position is hypocritical and implies double standards. In his opinion Russia opposes the removal of the monument because it is still led by successors of the Stalinist era, who have never apologized to the Eastern Europe for having turned it into a concentration camp.

Estonian media expert Tarmu Tammerk compares heavy criticism and calls to discharge of sociologist Juhan Kivirähk, who called for resignation of Estonian government, to an attempt of the Ansip government to establish "üks rahvas, üks riik, üks juht" ("one people, one state, one leader") ideology referring to the notorious citation "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer" by Adolf Hitler and states that sociologists must have full freedom of speech.

Andres Põder the current Archbishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Estonia, said that it was right thing for defending grave peace to rebury Soviet soldiers' remains to cemetery and also remove the memorial which had become a symbol of occupation and ground of political provocations.

Artur Taevere, founder of Heateo Sihtasutus, and other young volunteers have started a campaign "Valge tulp / Белый тюльпан", asking Estonians and Russians to place white tulips at sites that are of emotional value to members of the other ethnic community to counteract the bad feelings that the events have caused.

On May 7 Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar has called on the Estonian authorities to review their position regarding the reburial of the remains of Soviet soldiers in Tallinn. He said that "When Nazism unfortunately rears its ugly head in Europe today and as there have been attempts to deny the Holocaust, Estonia is acting in a manner that insults memory, which alarms us". He added that "The Jewish people will always regard what the Soviet soldiers did as a heroic feat" In addition, Jews consider remains of those people "holy, and reburial is allowed only in exceptional cases." On July 4, 2007, in a speech delivered as a part of reburial of remains of Yelena Varshavskaya at Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, Russia's Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar, who conducted her reburial, denounced statements describing the Soviet soldiers as occupants.

On May 1 Patriarch Alexius II of Moscow and All Russia, who was born in Tallinn, said after a service at Moscow's Intercession Monastery that The Estonian government's struggle against the memory of soldiers who fell in battle against fascism is indecent. "Fighting against the dead, against the soldiers who have always been honored by all nations, is the most unworthy deed. It is immoral to profane the memory of the dead", he said. "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. This is what Christ our Savior said." The Patriarch added that "When (Estonian) political leaders use the words as "drunkards" and "marauders", it is unworthy of the politician or a statesman.

On May 3 The Russian Congress of Jewish Religious Organizations and Associations (KEROOR) issued a statement criticizing the Estonian government for relocating a Soviet World War II memorial in Tallinn and for alleged Nazi sympathies. "The demonstratively defiant form in which the Estonian authorities have dismantled the Monument to the Liberator Warrior and are relocating the nearby grave of soldiers who gave their lives fighting fascism is not an accidental or spontaneous act", the KEROOR said in a statement. "Estonian authorities prefer to gloss over the fact that punitive detachments and the Estonian SS legion killed between 120,000 and 140,000 Russians, Jews, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Gypsies, and people of other ethnic groups during 1941-1944."

On April 30 Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized the removal from the center of Tallinn to a military cemetery by the Estonian government late last week of "a Soviet memorial commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany", which had stood for decades in the center of the Estonian capital". In a statement issued in Jerusalem by its chief Nazi-hunter, Israel director Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the Center asserted that the removal of the monument minimizes the severity of the crimes of the Holocaust in Estonia and insults the Nazis' victims in the country.

Russian professor of economy, Konstantin Sonin, condemned the relocation of Bronze Soldier in The Moscow Times article on May 8, 2007, saying that not only "the Estonian government clearly did not show its best side", but also "journalists who wrote of the "Russian monster" in an editorial published in one of Estonia's most popular newspapers crossed all conceivable limits of journalistic etiquette and political correctness". The author discussed possible alternative ways for Russian response to such hostile actions. These could be limiting temporarily access to the memorial to the victims of the violent resettlement of the Baltic peoples or reducing funding for taking care of certain halls within the Museum of Political Repression. Sonin concludes that implementation of these methods is so far impossible, because Russia does not have any such monuments to the suffering of people from other countries

On May 9 longtime human rights activist and World War II veteran Yelena Bonner called on Russians to acknowledge that the victory did not result in the liberation for many countries, including the Baltic nations. "We didn't liberate anyone, we weren't even able to liberate ourselves, although for four difficult years of war we hoped for it. We even said 'After the war, if we survive it, all life will be different.' It didn't happen; not in 1945, not in 1991!" she wrote in an e-mailed statement.