Interview: Estonian riots a 'wake-up call' to dialogue - minister

By Ben Nimmo May 9, 2007, 19:30 GMT

Tallinn - Estonia's Population Minister Urve Palo called on Wednesday for a renewal of dialogue with the country's Russian minority, two weeks after ethnic riots shook the Baltic state.

'This was a wake-up call... I think that Estonians and non- Estonians weren't having enough of a dialogue before the riots,' Palo told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in an exclusive interview.

'We weren't really communicating enough with one another. This is the reason why those bad things happened on the streets,' she added.

Two weeks ago, Estonia was rocked by the worst riots it has seen since the Russian Revolution, after protests at a government decision to relocate a Red Army war memorial from central Tallinn spilled over into violence.

Estonians see the monument as a reminder of their state's illegal occupation by the Soviet Union, but many of Estonia's 345,000-strong ethnic-Russian minority see it as a tribute to the sacrifices which Russians made in the war against Nazism.

'Around half of Estonia's Russian-speakers understand history differently. They really believe that Estonia was not occupied after the war ... but for Estonian-speaking people, and also some non- Estonians, the monument was a symbol of occupation,' Palo said.

And the historical debate is of crucial importance in modern Estonia. Under Estonian law, those Soviet citizens who entered the country under the occupation have no automatic right to citizenship - a fact which continues to anger the Russian community.

Since Estonia regained its independence in 1991, over 100,000 non- citizens have gained Estonian citizenship by passing naturalization exams, while a further 100,000 opted to take Russian citizenship.

A final 100,000 non-citizens remain, and so far, the government has resisted calls to ease the naturalization process.

'So many people studied to become citizens. If we now gave citizenship to 100,000 people just like that, it wouldn't look good,' said Palo, whose bureau oversees the naturalization process.

The ministry wants to help those who remain by offering free lessons in the Estonian language, command of which is a key requirement of the naturalization exams, the 35-year-old minister added.

The feeling of isolation in the non-citizen community has been intensified by the fact that Estonia has no domestic Russian-language TV channel - making Russian-based TV channels the chief source of entertainment and information for many residents.

That situation has already begun to change, with national TV channel ETV setting up a Russian-language web portal, and laying plans to launch a Russian-language TV channel in 2008, Palo said.

But the anger which the government's removal of the monument caused will not be so easy to assuage, she admitted.

'There's no magic wand which can make everything OK. You can't buy trust - we have to start by explaining why it happened, why the government decided to remove the monument,' she said.

'We have to explain to the Russian children: yes, Estonia was occupied, but by the USSR, not by your parents. And we have to tell the Estonians: yes, Estonia was occupied by the USSR, but those Russians who live here today aren't occupiers,' she added.

And with many ethnic Russians accusing the current government of not caring about them, ministers will have to walk a fine line to regain the minority's trust.

'We have to show more empathy in our statements, and understand how they are seen by different groups. Even if you are right in your ideas, you can't be too aggressive in saying it,' Palo said.