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Here is an Open Letter Appeal I got from Reval (Tallinn) where local ethnonazis are torturing people because they dared to protest. As ethnonazis do not tolerate any dissent, they removed identical text from this page. I was myself in Estonia and can vouch in front of anyone that every word described is true. The history note that follows it was written separately and answers some questions which may rise in the environment of almost official Russophobia and media onslaught not just on Russia, but on Russian heritage and on people who speak Russian.

Friends,

You should be aware that when you do business in Estonia or buy anything made in Estonia or visit it as tourist you support an apartheid state and fund a new generation of European Nazis. Please spend a few minutes to read through this letterto the end. Your voice, that of a free human being, is very important in preventing the new rise of ethnic fascism in Europe.

Estonia has recently joined the EU and the NATO, two supposedly democratic institutions, but it practices apartheid on the scale that would put old South Africa to shame. Estonia has disenfranchised one third of its population because of their wrong ethnicity and for years has been doing its best to rehabilitate Nazi war crimes and its perpetrators. The US and the EU and other so-called democracies prefer not to pay any attention to the mischievous antics of their naughty Baltic protégé. This demonstrative lack of concern on the part of the US and the EU does not cancel the fact that Estonia carries out an actual policy of ethnic and racial discrimination against one third of its population. Most of the victims of the apartheid policies in Estonia are Russian speakers who were born in what is now Estonia or have lived there for decades. They are denied citizenship on the ridiculous legal pretext that they are not descendants of the ethnically pure authoritarian statelet that was founded by Bolsheviks and ethnic nationalists in 1918 and came to its end through a referendum in 1940. Estonia managed to exterminate most of its ethnic minorities (though Germans as is usually the case got all the blame) even before Germans arrived on the scene, it emerged as an ethnically pure state in 1941. In practice it means that Russian speakers (not necessarily ethnic Russians but people of diverse backgrounds) are stripped of their civil rights because they were born since if their relatives stayed in or ventured into Nazi Estonia during the war years, they would had most certainly been exterminated. Those few people of wrong ethnicity who were saved from physical destruction survived only thanks to the arrival of the Soviet army. Instead of confronting its ugly past, Ethnonazi state of Estonia glorifies SS legionnaires who exterminated Russian villagers, gipsies and Jews in concentration camps, stages elaborate Nazi pageants and erects monuments to honor SS butchers. Old Nazis are now called freedom fighters and are routinely invited to official events. Estonian President shakes blood-soaked hands of old SS men and Estonian ministers call them heroes of Estonia. . While glorifying the Nazi past the Estonian government aggressively fights against any memory of Soviet soldiers, millions of whom paid the highest price for the right of Europe, East and West, North and South, to live free of Nazi plague, free of ethnic discrimination and officialized racism, and saved millions of individuals of wrong ethnicity or inappropriate political views from physical destruction in Nazi death camps. The self-appointed guardian of democracy - the United States of America and the European Union, its tireless continental champion, continue to ignore resurgent official Nazi malfeasance in Estonia; the mischief seems to be fine as long as activities are kept anti-Russian in nature and are restricted to the confines of the rogue Baltic statelet. Recently the ethnocratic Estonian regime overstepped the last limits of decency, whatever little of it had to begin with, and possibly broke domestic and international law. On April 26, in spite of pending court hearings, numerous public petitions, appeals by veteran organizations, pleas by neighboring Russian government, motions by relatives of fallen Soviet soldiers, an effective ban by the mayor of Tallinn on any immediate excavation near or at the memorial, pledges made by Estonian prime mister, former Communist functionary and the hammer of dissidents, Andrus Ansip himself not to do anything with the monument before May 9 (10) Victory Day, absolutely illegally, central Estonian authorities came out in force: uniformed police and ministry of defense vandals desecrated the memorial and like thieves stole the monument in the middle of the night. The Estonian ministry of the defense was in charge of the grave-digging disgrace. The significance of this act was not lost on the Russian-speaking population or on people of neighboring Russia: the Estonian army itself, the direct spiritual descendant of ethnic SS formations who were bloodied and defeated by live antifascist soldiers now moved in to fight with the victors’ bones. For Russians who live in Estonia, demolition of the monument (or as the Nazis call it – removal to another location), and the manner by whom, when and how it was carried out was an insult that can hardly be forgiven or forgotten. It was also an insult to the memory of their fathers and grandfathers, and an affront to the memory of all those who died in the battle with the Nazism - from Yugoslavia to the Baltic and from France to Norway.

Despite massive official campaign of threats and intimidation, some brave young Russian speaking residents came to a peaceful demonstration to protest the desecration of the war memorial. In response Estonian authorities used special police forces and the army, the spiritual descendant of the old SS, to suppress and disperse the protesters. Without any reason or provocation uniformed Estonian Ethnonazi thugs fired rubber bullets into the crowd at point blank range, used water cannon and tear-gas, threw smoke and noise grenades, - all the goodies generously supplied to needy Estonia by its caring democratic mentors, then police moved in to club women and teenagers indiscriminately in an attack which ferocity brought back memories of Nazi savagery and of ethnic SS units the Nazis employed for their punitive expeditions against lower race civilians.

During indiscriminate onslaught, first ethnic Russian was killed and dozens were maimed. In the ensuing flight from the scene some looting indeed occurred provoked by police provocateurs. Ethnonazi forces later moved in with arrests. Almost a thousand people were detained, most were arrested only because of their Russian ethnicity or wrong looks. Those confirmed Russian were transported to a harbor warehouse as if they were livestock where police proceeded to beat them, some were beaten almost to death, kept in unsanitary conditions, chained or bound together without access to water or toilets. Antifascist activists were subjected to torture (physical and chemical: the new generation of Estonian torturers has the benefit of receiving instruction from more democratic instructors). Later on, the local human rights supervisory agency represented by an ethnic Estonian loyal to the current ethnocratic regime and infamous for his wild Russophobe outbursts, inspected the blood stained improvised detention facility and declared that everything was normal.

Is it normal? You decide. In Europe there is a statelet which the EU declares is certifiably democratic. Under watchful protection of NATO this rabid regime of ethnic apartheid denies one third of its population most elementary rights – including the most basic and essential right of speaking and writing publicly in their own language, disenfranchises one third of its population on a most laughable legal technicality, and in a posture of racial superiority, sure of itself, insolent, giving the appearance of total impunity, commits crimes on a daily basis – from grave desecration to warrantless arrests and property searches. It murders, maims, beats up, arrests, tortures its people because of their wrong ethnicity. Brussels and Washington look the other way. Corrupt corporate media reports falsehoods and spreads disinformation about marauding vandals.

This is disgrace. The shame is not only on the US and EU governments which abetted, sponsored and nourished Ethnonazi statelet as a strategic asset and supposedly an irritant to Russia. The shame is on every European and American who keeps silent today for whatever reason he or she may have. Keeping silent, because perhaps he or she thinks Estonia is small and can act as naughtily as it wishes or that somehow Estonian authorities have a special right to discriminate against "dirty Russian" or may be you hold a belief Russian women and teenagers should be taught a lesson with rubber bullets and police batons for some historic event. Or you think that this is not your business as Estonia is far away and you have no connection with anyone who is Russian or Jewish or lives in the Baltics.

There is a poem about Nazism by the German priest Martin Niemoeller, the most known version of which reads in English translation :

They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Today, new European Nazis, the Ethnonazis, with blessing and encouragement of their benefactors in Brussels and Washington, came for Russians or, as the case is, just for Russian speakers. Other Europeans keep silent or perhaps even silently approve of the dirty deed. 1000 people were thrown into a detention camp because of their ethnicity. So what? Is it a small camp? On the scale of today’s Italy Estonian crime would mean construction of an improvised concentration camp with 50 000 inmates. Translated into the proportions of the United States the same concentration camp would have 200 000 detainees plus the appropriate number of guards and torturers. As the fight against civil rights shifts into high gear not just in the Baltics but even across the Atlantic, you cannot remain absolutely sure about the future, perhaps one day your owb home-grown Nazis, no matter how they would call themselves, inspired by your silence about the crimes of modern Estonian ethnic fascism, crimes committed in the name of ethnic justice or some chimera like promoting patriotism or exporting abstract freedom, will come for you. And then there will be no one to speak up. Because Russians, who once rescued Europe from the spiritual predecessors of today’s Estonian state, will never pay again the same price for the lives of those who are silent today.

What can you do? Not much but probably enough to stop the Nazis. Don’t buy anything in Estonia. Don't do any kind of business with Estonian companies and organizations. Don't invest in Estonian stocks. Don't travel to Estonia as a tourist. If you are American, write to your representative in the House of Representatives and ask why is the government wasting your tax dollars on support of Estonian Nazis? Demand that Estonia is kicked out of NATO before it becomes a liability to America and the rest of the world.

If you are an EU national, contact your parliamentary representative. Write to the foreign ministry and ask what is going on – how come Estonia is in the European Union? Is it some kind of mistake or a practical joke? There should be no place for ethnocracies in the family of civilized nations lest in the EU. Stop vast amounts of EU aid coming to the coffers of the Ethnonazi regime. Forward this letter to your local newspaper with a follow up note: why do they never report about apartheid, linguistic and ethnic discrimination in Estonia?

And at the very least please forward this letter to your friends and colleagues.

Thank you.

International Committee for the Baltic States without Nazism

NOTE: FEEL FREE TO REPRINT, REPUBLISH AND REDISTRIBUTE THIS LETTER IN ANY FORM THROUGH ANY MEDIA WITH NO RESTRICTIONS AS LONG AS ITS CONTENTS REMAINS UNALTERED.

End of Open Letter

Enclosures:

A short historical note edited by Alex and Roobit (roobit@mail.ru) to clear some major misunderstandings. There are persistent beliefs based on Cold War propaganda and ethnonazi lies:

1. Estonia was a separate ancient nation before Russia invaded it in 1944. The truth is that territory of what is now Estonia have been a part of Russia for about the same amount of time as France had Alsance (minus the period between Franco-Prussian war and the end of the First World War). 2. The problem - (grave digging, discrimination, and so on and on) only occurs because Russians don't want to learn Estonian. This is not so - most Russians speak local tongue, but the Estonian state, an ethnocracy, discriminates against Russian language and Russian speakers. Note that Russian language did not appear in Estonia recently but has been the language of government and courts for almost 300 years. 3. Russians deserve it. People of all ethnic backgrounds are discriminated against in Estonia, but particularly Russian speakers - no matter what ethnicity - are victims of discrimination and they do not deserve it. Estonia like neighboring Latvia are ethnocracies, i.e. ethnic states, their very claim to the statehood is based on the idea that a certain group is superior and has more rights than others in a given territory.

and historical brief to those who want to know more -

Today's Estonia has the borders of the Estonian SSR. Geographically it roughly consists of two provinces (governments) of Russia, Esthonia (Estliandia) which occupies the Northern part with the capital city of Reval (Tallinn) and Livonia (Lifliandia), which occupies the southern part and extends far into the territory of what is now Latvia.

The territory (comprising today's Estonia) was Russian in the early 1700s though on paper remained property of Sweden throughout the Great Northern War. Estonia, lock, stock and barrel - we'll be referring to it as Estonia though there was no country or state called Estonia - became an integral part of Russia under treaty of Nystad in 1721 (http://en.wikipedia.org/Treaty_of_Nystad).

Unlike Finland - which was a Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire, Estonia was not a defined entity but consisted of two provinces of Russia same way as Tver or Kostroma provinces were. The difference was the local peasant population, though not city dwellers, consisted predominantly of Finno-Ugric tribes of Esths (not Estonians), whose descendants now call themselves Estonians, spoke a language different from that used in the cities. The language of the government was Russian though German could have also be used in administration and the rule was pluralist and non-discriminatory. Except for a brief period after assassination of Alexander II, Russia has not attempted to force any linguistic or cultural harmonization on the province. This went in direct contrast with France or even Britain (on the British Isles) - France was very successful at eradicating ethnic and linguistic differences while Russia never made an attempt to do anything in that respect. On contrary, since the group that dominated the province was German-speaking (these people lived in Estonia since Middle Ages), Russia clandestinely funded nascent organizations of ethnic awareness and promoted nationalism among peasant population - the horrible consequences became apparent later on (in fact we are seeing it right now) - to weaken the position of Baltic Germans. This policy seems now absurd as the Baltic Germans were perhaps the most loyal supporters of the Russian Empire and proportionally no other subgroup gave Russia so many statesmen, generals, architects, artists, and writers.

By the Fundamental Law of 1906 - Russia's first written constitution - besides stating that the the Russian State is one and indivisible, made personal and linguistic equality of all subjects the absolute law of the land. Esths who by that time began migrating to the provinces cities faced no official or personal discrimination.

As Russia suffered war-induced collapse of authority, followed by Bolshevist putsch and the Baltic provinces faced the threat of German invasion, armed ethnic units emerged. Later skirmishes in which they were involved were called War of Independence and the myth necessary for maintenance of the new ethnic state that emerged in the wake of Russian revolution was fabricated.

At the time of the Bolshevist putsch, Russian Council of State issued its proclamation declaring all present and future agreements to be Bolsheviks (Soviet) authorities to be null and void and placing obligation on every Russian citizen to fight Bolshevism no matter how long it would take. The Council of State outlawed Bolshevism and nullified its future treaties.

In 1918 the Bolsheviks in order to reduce pressure on the Soviet state and to eliminate immediate threat from the west to Petrograd started negotiations with the ethnic groups and self-proclaimed illegal government in the provinces as Russian white (anti-Communist) army operated from what is now Estonia.

The negotiations between the local ethnic nationalists and Communists (Bolsheviks) began in 1918 and led to the Tartu Peace Treaty Iuriev Peace Treaty (Iuriev is the name of old Russian city founded by Yaroslav the Wise, now ethnically cleansed and known as Tartu) was finalized in 1920 by which a new ethnic state (prior to 1918 ethnic states which by definition presuppose discrimination of all others did not exist in Europe), Estonia, emerged. White (anti-Communist) Russian army units were to be disarmed. Prior to 1918 there was no nation or country or state or single entity called Estonia.

The signing of the treaty on which entire structure of the Estonian state and its claim to independence rests was illegal as the Bolsheviks seized power illegally and had no authority to sign anything with anyone.

The Treaty was not recognized by any powers at the time except by Soviet Russia and newly formed Estonia itself. The situation with so-called Latvia and Lithuania was almost identical.

During years of so-called Estonian independence, the new entity became an authoritarian ethnic statelet that even managed to ethnically cleanse Germans, under excuse of repatriating them to the homeland, who lived in the provinces since Middle Ages. Most other communities and people were forced to take Estonian (Esth, Finno-Ugric tribal) sounding names.

Although both pro-Estonian propaganda, media and Estonian authorities claim - or rather spread disinformation about Soviet Union invasion of Estonia, in the year 1940 Soviet armed forces entered Estonia without firing a single shot per mutual defense and base placement agreement reached between Stalin's Soviet Union and Estonian ethnocracy. The change of government occurred because Estonian Communists, emboldened by the presence of the Soviet armed forces, managed to seize reigns of power from the fascist-leaning ethnocracy and through referendum forced the provinces to join USSR as Estonian SSR. The current Estonian ethnocracy challenges the validity of the vote on the grounds that foreign troops were present in the country at the time of the referendum. The foreign troops however entered the province without any resistance and with consent of the ethnic authorities at the time. The irony of this cannot escape a careful observer - the United States and its diminutive allies like Estonia which at this very moment has troops of occupation in Iraq - now claim that a vote forced through foreign invasion (in which as many Iraqis were killed as was the entire population of Estonia at the time or perhaps as many as there are Estonians alive today - according to the Lancet magazine from 600 000 to one million Iraqis died in the aftermath of the invasion and under occupation. There are about 900 000 "ethnic" Estonians alive - the figure is given here just to give some proportion to the evil). Modern Estonia also claims that election in totally ravished Iraq under boot of foreign occupation in which it willfully participates is legitimate while for some reason claims that peaceful vote that took place in the presence of the Soviet troops was not.

Resurgent ethnic Estonian authorities cooperated willfully with Nazi occupation and ethnically cleansed the country even before Nazi Germans took over. As Germans were expelled, in Reval (Tallinn), some local fascists managed to set up own unrecognized and illegal ethnic Nazi state that survived for two days.

In 1944 Estonian SSR was re-incorporated in the USSR. In the Soviet period there was no legal discrimination against use of any local language or dialect in public or in employment of Estonians in official positions. The Communist boss in the city of Tartu in charge of anti-Communist dissident persecution, and the instructor of the Communist Party Committee in the city was Andrus Ansip, the current Prime Minister of Estonia.

The so-called annexation of Estonia, valid and legal from any imaginable perspective, was unrecognized by a number of states, including the United States, who were hostile to the Soviet Union. This occurred only in the context of the cold war.

Russian speakers who live in Estonia at the present were either born there or entered its present territory well before 1991 - the year when Russian Federation recognized Estonian claim to independence on the assurance that no ethnic state will emerge and that every single resident of Estonian SSR would be granted local citizenship and not denied any civil rights.