Estonia’s Road To Tolerance - summary

On a beautiful sunny morning I had a great opportunity to take part in a

seminar „Estonia’s Road to Tolerance“, hosted by The British Council
Estonia and The British Embassy Tallinn. The moderator Edward Lucas, a
well-known editor of The Economist, started the day with words: „What does
tolerance mean and what can it bring to society?“.

Making people think about tolerance

The first speaker was Kari Käsper, the member of the management board of Estonian Human Rights
Centre. According to him, the tolerance topic has not been addressed in Estonia for a long time and
has not been put in a larger perspective. He stated that their aim is to look at the minorities in Estonia
from a wider point of view, not only talking about Russians who came here in the 60’s but also about
todays migrants from all over the EU. After bringing out the Estonian laws of equal treatment: the
Constitution, the Equal Treatment Act and the Gender Equality Act, one of his main concerns was that
it is quite difficult to defend one’s rights based on overall and vague constitutional points. He said
people are mostly unaware what equal treatment means and therefore raising knowledge about it is
crucial in Estonia’s society. He also gave a summary about the 2010 campaign „Diversity Enriches“
which aim was to make people think about discrimination in Estonia’s society and had hopes for
continuation of it.

The second speaker Indarjit Singh, a British journalist and broadcaster, a prominent British Asian
active in Sikh and interfaith activities, was delighted to be back in Estonia. He said this conference
shows how quickly Estonia is moving towards equality and being able to talk freely about it.

His speech was very impressive, enriched with many profound metaphores. The fact that minorities
are often given jobs others don’t want is no surprise for us. He said minorities are often criticized
about living in ghettoes and not connecting to the community but if minorities are not being
understood in the first place and not made feel welcome, we should not expect great amity from them
either.

I really liked his thought that at a distance we all look different and in the fog of not understanding we
might look even dangerous to others. But the bottom line is that no matter what our religion or ethnic
identity is, we are all members of human family and that God is not interested in our different religion
or skin tone but interested in how we live.

He said that the greatest improvement on minorities has been in the UK schools. In the 60’s
considerable bullying from other students and teachers occured but today the position has changed
considerably for the better. Children are taught about differences and diversity as something that
enriches society. „Sadly, there are still some schools in the UK that do not teach equality and they
should be shut down,“ he said.

This made me think about schools in Estonia and how equality is taught here. I have to admit when I
went to the secondary school, there were incidents where pupils bullied fellow students who were
different, for instance the ones were bullied who were better students and who got better grades. I
don’t think there is less bullying in Estonian schools today, and to be honest, I think equality as a
subject should be definitely brought in to the school curriculum. There is this everlasting debate on
how everything a kid does starts from his home but I believe school can play a crucial role in
developing the knowledge on equality and tolerance in a child also.

Accordingly to Mister Singh, the minority groups should feel the warmth and welcome from its host
and that different communities are not barriers between people, they can be the gateways in
understanding life and enriching it. He also theorized that when people have somebody to call „us“,
they automatically search for someone to look down on and call „them“. Is it just human nature?
Competition? A true will to survive?

Russians prefer TV and do not like subtitles

The third speaker’s Viktoria Korpan’s speech was colourful and full of statistics. She is the Russian
Editor in Chief of the daily Postimees and her aim was to present the media preferences of the non-
estonian speaking population in Estonia. She admitted that Russians prefer TV and the Internet to the
print media and only quarter of non-Estonians read Postimees Rus. Surprisinly, she stated, women
tend to read more than men. She conducted an on-line Postimees research with sampling of approx.
1000 people and the results were stunning indeed: over 60% of the non-estonian population does not
watch Estonian TV-channels for two main reasons: the poorness of the content and the subtitles (!) as
Russians prefer audio translation. The most watched TV-show on Estonian channels is the Estonian
News.

When she was asked, what she would do differently if she were the new director of ETV2 – the
Estonian TV channel for non-Estonians, she stated it’s all about motivation to create different and
interesting programs for them. She also didn’t believe it’s even possible to compete with the Russian
channels due to the small amount of finances ETV2 has.

Estonia as a mirror

Professor Evhen Tsybulenko was the next speaker. He is the director of Human Rights Centre and
full Professor of Law, Chair of International and Comparative Law Department at Tallinn Law
School. In my opinion this was one of the best speeches I have ever heard.

He started the presentation with a compromising thought that in the Soviet times Russians were the
first among equals and after Estonia regained its independence, many Russians lost their identity.
Still, there are Russians in Estonia who are loud and forming NGOs that are financed by Kremlin,
using themselves as a political tool, which is indeed quite hypocritical because they do not want to go
back to live in Russia. They prefer to stay here and make others believe they are extremely
discriminated. In his opinion strong people always try to find solutions but weak ones see nothing else
but problems and this applies to some non-Estonian speaking minorities here. Of course, to some
extent personal discrimination appears in every country and he thinks it is inevitable.

I very much liked the positive examples he brought out about the Ukrainian community in Estonia. In
his opinion they can excercise all their national activities here, without any problems (having their
cultural centre, a church and even a summer school which is very popular among the Estonian
children). „If you want to keep your identity, you can do it and can still be integrated into the Estonian
society,“ he said, „Estonia is like a mirror – if you smile to it, it will smile back, if you make ugly
faces, it will do the same to you“.
Abdul Turay, a British journalist based in Tallinn, was the next speaker. His speech was dynamic, full
of good quotes and sadly too short for me. His aim was to talk about the black population in Estonia
and about the overall tolerance in the country. „Well firstly the black population in Estonia is so small
it’s much more likely for your daughter to be eaten by a lion than to get married to a black guy,“ he
stated.

He pointed out that in many cases Estonians are more black than he is due to the enslavement in their
history. „They are acting in a normal way thanks to their history,“ he said about how Estonians try to
preserve their identity and culture. He also stated the problem Estonia is facing is not immigration,
it’s emigration. I agree because in my opinion every year a disturbingly large number of Estonians
leave the country thanks to the low wages and without knowing if they ever return and even though the
problem has been pointed out even by the Estonian President, I have hardly seen anything done about
it. One thing is to be tolerant about the minority groups, another thing is to accept the governments’
not doing anything in order to improve the emigration situation.

Children and dwarf-groups

Indrek Teder, the Estonian Chancellor of Justice, was up next with his presentation on the children in
Estonia. His main point was that the state should offer citizenship to all the children living here and
that all people are wanted and necessary.

Marju Lauristin’s speech was next. She is a social scientist and the Editor in Chief of the Estonian
Human Development Report being probably one of the best English-speaking professors in Estonia,
considering her respectable age. She started the speech with numbers: more than 200 000 people have
Estonian citizenship who’s mother tongue is not Estonian. According to her, a difference should be
made when addressing the non-Estonian population here. Ones are the Estonian citizens who think
Russia is their homeland, others have no citizenship at all and the third group consists of the citizens
of Russia living here and she thinks those groups should not be put together which is mostly done. The
loudest group in Estonia are the citizens of Russia and they make others believe that ALL of the
Russian population here is governed by the Kremlin propaganda, which is also not true.

She pointed out that the tolerance debate is very substantial and has to go in depths of society, not
only starting and ending with purely political discussions. One thought I very much liked, was that we
have to turn our integration process towards children so every child is welcome to Estonia (like Teder
stated). Professor Lauristin also stated that for Russian minority groups it’s simply not acceptable to
be a part of a dwarf-group so therefore they connect themselves to the Russian community.

John Abraham Godson, the first black member of Polish Parliament, put the seminar in a nutshell.

He stated there is a big difference between intercultural competence and racism because intercultural
competence is based on stereotypes and lack of knowledge, racism occurs when you know the other
culture and decide to resist it.

To sum it all up – great seminar with inspiring speakers, made me realize there is still quite a long
way for Estonia to go in the tolerance field but as this seminar shows, we are taking first steps towards
the long journey being open for opinions and trying to retain our identity for tomorrow.