Battle-scarred Tallinn smiles on Japan's imperial guest

By Ben Nimmo May 24, 2007, 13:14 GMT

Tallinn - As Tallinn prepared to welcome Japan's Emperor Akihito on his first-ever visit to the Baltic states on Thursday, its smile of welcome appeared more than a little gap-toothed.

Four weeks ago, the city was rocked by the worst riots it has seen in a century as protests against the government's relocation of a Soviet-era war memorial spilled over into violence.

Estonians see the monument as a symbol of their state's illegal occupation by the Soviet Union. Most of the country's 345,000 Russians, however, see it as a tribute to Russians' sacrifice in the war against Nazism.

And in two nights of chaos, an estimated 2,000 rioters - mainly ethnic Russian youths - rampaged through central Tallinn, looting shops, setting fire to property and battling police.

One month on, the scars are still plain to see. In a narrow street a cobble-stone's throw from the city's medieval heart, soot still blackens the frontage of a nightclub torched on the first night of trouble.

Shops seem to huddle behind boarded-up windows or wink crazily at passers-by through starred and shattered panes.

'It was crazy! What did they do it for?' taxi driver Kalju Kalamees said, pointing to an alcohol store whose windows are still covered in plywood sheets.

The aftershocks of the rioting still trouble Estonia. In the wake of the fighting, the Russian government - which sees the Red Army as a near-sacred institution - accused Estonia of 'blasphemy' in wanting to move the monument from the city centre to a war cemetery.

And Russian diplomats demanded that international bodies such as the EU, NATO and the Council of Europe condemn what it saw as Estonian attempts to 'rewrite history.'

Faced with diplomatic pressure from a country almost exactly 100 times the size of their own, many Estonians have seized on the Japanese emperor's visit as a confirmation of the fact that they have not lost their international friends.

'To give it the (Estonian) foreign ministry's spin, the visit is a nice example of the fact that the spat with Russia hasn't diminished Estonia's image,' Andres Kasekamp, head of the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

It will be a long time before the scars of the conflict heal. The damage caused by two nights of violence is still clearly visible on the streets of the city.

And the relocation of the monument, and the subsequent riots, have raised suspicions between Estonia's ethnic majority and Russian minority - suspicions which will not be easily overcome.

But some in Estonia are already saying that even the riots have not been without their positive side.

'There is one good thing in this: everyone now understands that there is a very big problem with integration policy,' Professor Raivo Vetik, an expert in ethnic relations at Tallinn University, said after the riots.

And Tallinn itself has learned to wear its scars with grace. On the boarded-up windows of the burned-out nightclub, a local wit has sprayed a stencilled picture of a baseball bat.

The logo under it reads, 'In case of stupidity, break everything.'

Tallinn's smile may be somewhat wry, but its spirit seems undiminished as it awaits its imperial guest.