Estonia was on Saturday in the grip of its worst crisis since it won independence from the Soviet Union, after a second night of bloody ethnic rioting shook the capital. President Vladimir Putin expressed “most serious concern” to Germany’s chancellor about the violence in Tallinn after the Estonian government’s decision to remove a Soviet war memorial, the Kremlin said.
Police and ethnic Russians in the tiny Baltic state clashed early on Saturday, with nearly 1Â 000 people arrested and more than 100 injured. As some people waved Russian flags, demonstrators threw bottles and stones. They retreated as officers advanced on the crowd, fired tear gas and began making arrests. Several parked cars were smashed and billboards were set on fire.
The violent protests exploded late on Thursday night after the government removed the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn’s Freedom Square, a memorial to the Soviet soldiers who liberated Estonia from the Nazis in 1944.
Ethnic Russians are also angry that the government wants to exhume the bodies of 14 Soviet soldiers believed to be buried in a grave beside the memorial and rebury them in a military cemetery. The government argues that the location near a busy intersection is not a proper resting place for the bodies, but the Defence Ministry has delayed the exhumations while the unrest continues.
The rioting has focused attention on Estonia’s worsening ethnic fault line. About 300Â 000 of Estonia’s 1,3-million inhabitants are ethnic Russians. They have persistently complained of discrimination, and say they have been marginalised ever since Estonia won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Russian government officials reacted angrily to the removal of the monument, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov calling it “absolutely repulsive”. The Kremlin said Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, had discussed “the crisis situation in Estonia”, which joined the EU in 2004.
On Friday, both Houses of Russia’s Parliament called on Putin to sever diplomatic relations with its Baltic neighbour.
But it was in Estonia itself that the most serious repercussions from the crisis were being felt. Trouble spread from Tallinn to other predominantly Russian-speaking areas of the country. Vandals went on the rampage in the north-eastern cities of Johvi and Kohtla-Jarve, police said.
In Johvi, looters set fire to the statue of an Estonian general who fought the Russians during the country’s successful 1918 war of independence. On Saturday, Estonia said that official websites had come under cyber attack, and restricted access to them from outside the country. Estonian Radio said hackers had attacked the website of the Reform Party of Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, putting out a bogus apology from the head of government.
The government has defended its decision to remove the statue and exhume the bodies of Soviet soldiers buried there. It says that for Estonians there was little difference between Nazi occupation during World War II and the later tyranny of Soviet rule.
But Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Yakovenko, said Estonia had violated “European values” and that its government was trying to rewrite history, adding: “The dismantling of the monument is an insult to the memory of those who defended all nations of Europe from fascism.”
He also claimed that the authorities had used “excessive” force against “peaceful” demonstrators. During Thursday’s riots, one person was stabbed to death and 300 were arrested. The Kremlin on Saturday said that the dead man was a Russian citizen and asked for an urgent investigation.
In Moscow, pro-Kremlin youth groups flung tomatoes at the Estonian embassy and parked a life-sized inflatable tank in front of the building. Demonstrators elsewhere burnt Estonian flags.
In Tallinn, Julia Garanza, a police spokesperson, justified the police response and said small bands of protesters were roaming the central area early on Saturday, breaking shop windows and looting stores. Some cars passing the clashes in Tallinn’s Freedom Square honked their horns as a sign of support for the protesters.
Estonian leaders criticised the rioters, with President Toomas Hendrik Ilves calling them criminals. “All this had nothing to do with the inviolability of graves or keeping alive the memory of men fallen in World War II,” Ilves said on Friday. — Guardian Unlimited Â