I haven't had time to update the blog for a while for 2 reasons. For fist, I have really too much schoolwork as the exam dates are coming closer and closer and for second reason - the riots - which is todays subject.
Normally I wont put my nose into politics. I just really don't trust politicians. No matter how good or believable they are. Usually the smoothest politicians are the worst - they have the deepest and the extremest ideas. Extreme does not always mean a bad thing but usually it is hidden until the minister is in place to fulfill hes/her ideas. Besides every politician has their secret agenda no matter how honest - everyone wants to get rich.
As usually I'm getting ahead of myself. The problem started around a year ago when the government started to theorized around moving a monument from the center of Tallinn to a cemetery in the suburbs. For what reason I cant remember and I don't care really... The monument was in honor of the soviet soldiers who fought off the Nazi soldiers. As history was never my favorite subject I don't remember exactly nor do I believe a history written in times of CCCR times (the history was always rewritten to emphasize the goodness of Soviet Union). So for whatever reason the monument was created or for whatever reason it was a good idea to move it - I don't care.
Estonia's population is around 1.4 million people of which 0.4million are russians. W have been tolerant of the russian population, we have adopted some admissions to out constitution to allow the russian community to work with us. As out national language is Estonian, we still have a bilingual society (Estonian and Russian). We have granted special privileges to some areas in our country to allow legal papers to be entered in Russian, as most of the people living there are native russian peaking people. They have had time for around 16 years to learn even basic Estonian, but around 40% of the russians (and yes I mean those people living here and who are not speaking even a word of Estonian - starting from this point I refer to those with lower capital letter as they really are not russians nor do they try to be Estonians) don't speak even basic Estonian. In our constitution we have set the Estonian language as our national language, but usually trying to argue with a russian in Estonian you will fail ad they will give you an empty glare "What jiberis are you going about now - speak Russian as this is the only thing we understand". This is with the elder 35+ people... With the younger ones there is a rift between - some who try (usually with high school/university education level) and some who don't give a Frell (elementary school or below level of education). Of course there are exceptions in both. When I have had guests from other countries and they have heard me talk in Estonian and my coworker speak Russian they have had interesting time learning the basics :) Usually businessmen men also speaks pretty good Estonian and at least 1 other forging language, so I have no quarrel with them - good job I say!
Well back to the unrest. This is the first time In Estonia that we have huge (in our population terms) mobs of people running amok in the city, trashing things, breaking into shops, stealing stuff, turning cars upside down and setting fires to the shops and the stuff stolen from them. This is the First time in 16 years from when we got our independence.
The events started Friday 26.03.07 as the government started to prepare to move the statue. The mobs started to gather in the dig site and the police sent more policemen to guard the site. The mobs got bigger and bigger... Soon the mobs started to get controlled by an russian extremist group called "Öine Vahtkond" (Night Guard in translation) and they started to wind up the people there. It did not take too long until the shouting started. Soon came the confrontations with the police as the regular russians started to get influenced by the extremist and the emotions ran wild. The normal people got turned against each other and the police. The government decided to send the "riot police" troops to the premises (not into the crowd but the premises of the dig site). The extremist took it as an sign that the mobs could be divided into smaller groups and they would loose their grip over the already emotional people, so they started to agitate the people to penetrate the police barrier. At the beginning it was just a simple word fight but soon it became a small hassle as some of the people started to try physically penetrate the barrier. The police tried at the beginning to do what they know how to do best - try to stop the penetration attempts. Stopping the people trying to run through the barrier. They didn't use any unnecessary force nor did they beat or even arrest the runners. This was enough for the extremist to take the last step - they started to agitate people to the police by forcing on idea that the police are brutalizing the people and they should retaliate. I don't know who threw the first stone - the extremists or the common people - but this started a chain of events that no one didn't expect.
This would have been the turning point where the police could have stopped everything if they only would have sent in the riot troops to dissipate the mobs one by one but they didn't. The riot troops were put in front of the regular police to protect them as they had the special gear to protect them self from falling stones, bottles, what ever else was at hand to throw at them. There they stood for around 3 hours and took the beating. This made the crowd feel like a superior force and no consequences would come to them if they would storm the policemen. Here the things got from worse to plain ugly. Feeling the superiority of the mass psychosis the bolder ones would start to storm the front. To their surprise the riot police stopped them at the tracks. Getting angry and frustrated by this the loads of rocks and bottles started to increase exponentially. This in the other hand created an unseen problem for the bystanders - as the police front created waves to push the marauders back and to keep a safe distance between then so they could not be stabbed for example, the chicken extremists started to throw the rocks from a longer distance and there fore around half of the objects thrown fell into the crowd. This of course heated up some more violence.
Now the politicians finally wake from their deep hibernation and give an order to use tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd. This is of course too little too late. The crowd had generated enough marauders from is peaceful bystanders to go into a rampage. Angried by the force used against them and the adrenaline from the experience they start to drift in to the direction of "Vabaduse Väljak" (Freedom square in translation) destroying shops and kiosks on their way. They are around 1km apart but there are 5 roads connecting them directly. 2 of them got blocked in time by the Police, but all shops in 3 of them got totally trashed. Not bad eh? Its only 20Mil EEK worth of stuff...
So eventually the mass psychosis ran out and the marauders ran out of things to break and loot, so the police finally started to make progress in arresting the perpetrators and by 5 in the morning most crowds had dissipated and went home to sleep it off. Saturday the extremist tried to organize another raid, but they could not get enough crowd in one place and the police used the necessary force to dissipate any big crowd from gathering and arresting the aggressive components. There is also good statistics of this also - first day the police only 300 people of around 20 000 because they were given the order to start aggressive arresting too late, on the other hand the premature arresting of 500 people bough down all the mobs so that they could not gather the strength needed to become marauders.
This comes to today Monday 30.04.07 - as there aren't enough bold extremists left to confront the police them self and the gathering of mobs generates fear in the normal people as they can be arrested. SO the masterminds thought up a plan to... hmm... slow down the cities traffic by using public forums to agitate russians to drive through the city with speed of 5km/h and blow the horn constantly. Well, this didn't last too long as it against the highway code and around 100 of these wannabe marauders were fined and some were arrested.
What surprised me was that most of the big news agencies each time got their story wrong...
These are the events as I saw them...
technorati tags:Life, marauders, unrest, police, Estonia, Russia, fighting, arrests
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