TALLINN - An estimated 1,500 participants in resistance to Soviet occupation who gathered in Tallinn on July 6 adopted a statement calling for Estonian citizens who fought against totalitarian communism in World War II to be given a status equal to that of veterans of the 1918-1920 War of Independence.
The appeal also calls on Parliament to make a political evaluation of the events of World War II in Estonia and declare the defensive battles of 1944, when units formed from Estonians fought against advancing Red Army troops alongside the forces of Nazi Germany, a fight for the restoration of Estonia's independence and democracy.
The appeal calls to introduce a national status of freedom fighter, which would then be assigned, posthumously where necessary, to those who participated in resistance to Soviet occupation authorities as the Forest Brothers, and to those who took part in the battles of 1941, in the defense battles of 1944 and in the resistance after World War II.
The 12th convention of Estonian freedom fighters, organized by the Estonian Freedom Fighters Association, was dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the defensive battles of 1944 and the 10th anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Estonia.
The events started with a service at the Methodist Church in Tallinn, after which wreaths were laid at a still unfinished memorial square at Maarjamae on the outskirts of the capital.
Trivimi Velliste, an MP from the oppositional Pro Patria Union, said an estimated 1,500 people had gathered at the Kadriorg Stadium where the main meeting took place, with speakers including former President Lennart Meri.
In his speech, Velliste compared the battles of 1944 to the fight for Estonia's independence and called on politicians and historians to call things by their proper names.
Velliste said that in 1944, Estonia existed as a state de jure, and in September that year, when the interim government of Otto Tief was formed, it also existed de facto.
"Who has the right to forbid a country and a nation - even more, a state - to put up resistance to its deadly enemy with all the means available to it? Even if these means were German weapons," Velliste said.
Russia has been consistently criticizing the meetings of freedom fighters, referring to them as gatherings of former SS men because of the Waffen SS status of the foreign units that fought alongside Nazi Germany's troops in World War II.
