Eesti in brief - 2008-05-01

  • 2008-05-01
Night Vigil picketed Tallinn's City Hall area with only a handful of participants. It was organized exactly a year after the riots called Bronze Nights in Tallinn. The picketers had placards, on which they were demanding the capture the killer of Dimitri Ganin, a 20-year-old Russian citizen who was killed in unclear circumstances in riot year ago; they also wanted the resignation of Prime Minister Andrus Ansip and the establishment of a commission to investigate the mass unrest. Then they moved to D-terminal, which was last year used as a temporary detention house by police. The picket lasted about hour and half and passed with no incidents.

Foreign Minister Urmas Paet sent his condolences to his Ukrainian colleague Volodymyr Ogryzkoover for the helicopter accident in the Black Sea on April 28.  "Please accept my own and whole Estonian's people condolences to the victims' families and all Ukrainians," said Paet. The accident happened on April 28 at 9.39 a.m. local time, when the empennage of the helicopter hit Tavrida naphtha platform, which belongs to Ukraine. The copter fell to the sea and killed all twenty people on board.

Estonia will support Madagascar with 32, 000 euro. It will go through U.N. children's fund UNICEF to support residents of Madagascar, primarily children, who suffered from cyclones Ivan and Fame. The disaster took more than a hundred lives and forced about 200,000 people to leave their homes. The money will go mainly to satisfy children's primary needs, restoring schools and resuming lessons. Hundreds of schoolhouses, equipment and study materials were destroyed or seriously damaged by the cyclones. Tropical cyclone Fame struck the island at the end of January and Ivan in February.

On May 8, freedom fighters will organize their traditional meeting to mark the end of World War II. It will take place in Maarjamagi memorial at twelve o'clock and will last about an hour and a half. It will be organized by Estonian Freedom Fighters Union. This year there is no clarity about which participants will speak yet. Last year participants remembered victims of Holocaust in Klooga, outside of Tallinn and put wreaths at the monument to Unknown Soldier at defense forces cemetery. The event ended in Maarjamagi, where Prime Minister Andrus Ansip attended. So did some other members of the government and diplomatic corps. 

Former Prime Minister Mart Laar was given the Sjur Lindebrekke's "Democracy and Human Rights Award" in Oslo. Laar received the award for economical reforms in Estonia, which many countries in transition have taken as an example, for counseling economical reforms in Georgia and supporting opposition in Cuba. In the speech he gave when getting the award, he mentioned that one problem that stops world from fighting effectively with totalitarian regimens is the fact that the second bloodiest totalitarian regime still is not denounced. He called up to fight against Communism, which should lead to the international denouncement as it has happened with Nazism.