Russia enraged as Estonia takes down Soviet war memorial
Friday April 27, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
The Estonian government today removed a Soviet war memorial from the capital, Tallinn, with the work completing a move that has enraged Moscow and split Estonia.
Under cover of darkness, workers took down the statue, called the Bronze Soldier, following major protests in which one person was killed and dozens injured. The rioting was Estonia's worst since independence.
Work will now begin to exhume the remains of the Russian solders buried by the memorial. Where possible, they will be identified before being moved to a cemetery outside Tallinn.
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Many ethnic Estonians have long viewed the memorial as a painful reminder of the hardships they suffered during five decades of Soviet rule, which ended in 1991, and wanted it removed from the city centre.
However, the country's Russian-speakers - around one-third of the 1.3 million population - see it as a tribute to the soldiers who died fighting Nazi Germany.
After a day of mainly peaceful protests, violent clashes began yesterday evening. One man was stabbed to death and 12 police officers and 44 protesters were injured in the fighting, a government spokesman said, and around 300 people were arrested.
Earlier yesterday, work on the statue began behind screens set up to shield it from the public.
Later in the day, the government said it had decided to remove the two-metre bronze statue "to ensure that it cannot be used in the future as a reason or cause for extensive and dangerous rioting".
Government officials said the riots showed protesters were troublemakers who "have nothing to do with respecting and protecting the memories of those who fell during the second world war".
Russia has reacted with fury, and it was reported that its upper house of parliament had today adopted a motion calling on the government to consider breaking off diplomatic relations with Estonia.
"We must react without hysterics, but take serious steps that would show our true attitude to this inhuman deed," Russian news agencies quoted the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, as saying.
Many Russian speakers complain of discrimination in Estonia, where laws make it hard to get jobs or citizenship without proficiency in Estonian.
Soviet troops invaded the Baltic countries - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - in 1940, but were pushed out by the Nazis a year later. The Red Army retook the countries in 1944 and occupied them until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.