Earlier today, I mentioned the Estonian government’s decision to move a sensitive statue, and to exhume fallen Russian WW2 soldiers.
According to a Finnish Broadcasting Company news item, Finland’s prime minister Matti Vanhanen has now expressed his support for the Estonian government’s actions. This is no surprise to me - I generally no longer expect to agree with Mr. Vanhanen in pretty much any matter.
The war is more than 50 years gone. This doesn’t mean that the memory of those who died fighting for their country would have become a simple issue of municipal engineering. What’s more, the statue is now an icon for the country’s Russian-speaking minority that is being cornered in other ways as well.
PM Vanhanen chairs the government of a country with its own lingual minorities. In terms of pretexts, Sweden has once ruled over Finnish territory, quite as Russia has dominated Estonia. Independence does not justify repressing minorities, not even in revenge.
Post a Comment