News Highlights from January 11—January 18, 1999
* A tall, heavy-set man who couldn’t find underwear to fit him, reportedly appealed to a higher authority for relief: the Estonian head of state.
Alar Sink told Estonia’s Meie Maa newspaper that he had tried and failed to get a local clothes manufacturer to make a special pair of underwear for his two-meter-high (6 feet, 7 inch), 172-kilogram (379-pound) frame.
He said there were no outlets selling clothes for extremely tall, larger-than-average consumers in Estonia and that he had no choice but to turn to Tallinn’s Trixtal underwear maker.
But when the company said no, explaining that it wasn’t profitable to make garments that weren’t part of its regular production line, he said he picked up the phone and dialed the office of President Lennart Meri.
According to the newspaper report, a secretary put Sink through to the president, who promised that he would make a direct appeal to the factory. A few days after the president’s call, the company said it would take the order, for ten pairs of underwear, the report said.
Contacted for a comment, however, the president’s press office said it had no knowledge of the incident. It suggested that the whole story may have been a prank.
The man’s claim about securing presidential intervention to buy underwear was widely reported in the Estonian press and was even picked up by the Reuters news agency.
* Most Latvians who called a hotline set up by the Riga city government said they supported establishing special districts where prostitutes can legally ply their trade, officials announced on January 12.
The telephone number was set up to survey public opinion after Latvia’s national legislature ordered local governments to regulate the sex trade.
Out of 120 callers, 76 favored setting aside officially sanctioned areas for prostitutes and 44 opposed the idea, according to city spokesman Artis Jurtevics.
Callers were also asked to recommend streets that would be suitable to designate as red-light districts. Many suggested the city-center Caka street—already a main gathering place for prostitutes.
Other callers said it would be safer and more hygienic if prostitution was moved off the street and into government-approved brothels.
The opinions of an additional 16 callers were considered frivolous and not counted, Jurtevics said. He said several suggested the red light district should be on Jekaba street, next to Latvia’s parliament building.
The city spokesman said the survey results were not a surprise, and meshed with other opinion polls showing that over 60 percent of all Latvians supported legalized prostitution in some form.
Until now, some restrictions on prostitution have been in place in the Latvian capital, but they have not been enforced. Police in Riga say they have only made a handful of arrests in recent years on prostitution-related charges.
Results of the phone survey would be forwarded to the city council, which could designate new red-light districts within the next few weeks, city spokesman Jurtevics said. He said most Riga lawmakers seemed to favor regulating prostitution, not banning it.
* Lithuania announced on January 11 that its inflation rate for 1998 was just 2.4 percent, Lithuania’s lowest figure since independence and one of the lowest rates in the former Soviet bloc. The figure is also the lowest among the three Baltic countries.
Last week, Latvia reported that consumer prices in 1998 rose by just 2.8 percent. Estonia’s said its 1998 inflation rate was 6.5 percent. The Latvian and Estonian figures are also record lows.
After the Soviet collapse in 1991—their economies in shambles—rates of inflation soared above 1000 percent a year. Analysts say the Baltics have brought inflation figures down so dramatically by implementing tough financial reforms and by maintaining balanced or nearly balanced national budgets.
* Estonia now has one of the largest number of Russian citizens of any country in the world outside Russia, the Russian embassy in Tallinn said on January 15.
Nearly 120,000, mostly-ethnic residents in Estonia have taken citizenship of Russia since Estonia regained independence following the Soviet collapse in 1991, according to embassy press spokesman Andrei Kotov.
The majority of the Russian citizens in Estonia immigrated during Soviet rule and live here permanently, but have found qualifying for Estonian citizenship too difficult, Kotov said.
Acquiring Estonian citizenship requires language and history tests, plus an oath of loyalty. Russia grants citizenship to all former Soviet citizens who apply, with virtually no conditions and regardless of where they live.
“Since they could get Russian citizenship much easier, they took it instead of Estonian citizenship,” the official said.
With Russian passports, ethnic Russians also don’t need visas to visit relatives and friends in Russia and, in some cases, this may also be one of the motives for taking Russian citizenship, Kotov said.
“But somehow this is not a normal situation for Estonia,” he said. “Most countries do not have so many citizens of another country living permanently on its territory.”
The spokesman said he believed Estonia had the largest number of Russian citizens of any country outside Russia, but said he did not currently have the figures to confirm it.
Some 60,000 people in Latvia have opted for Russian citizenship, and far fewer in Lithuania.
After Estonia (pop. 1.5 million) regained its independence in 1991, the issue of citizenship for its 400,000-strong ethnic-Russian minority became a point of contention with Moscow.
The Kremlin accused Estonia of using citizenship laws to disenfranchise ethnic Russians who can’t vote in national elections and can’t hold some state jobs—including the police— without citizenship.
Russia has been especially critical of the Estonian-language tests required for citizenship. Many ethnic Russian speak little or no Estonian and so can’t pass the necessary language exams.
Estonia granted automatic citizenship only to those who were citizens before the 1940 Soviet occupation and their descendants. This included virtually all ethnic Estonians and some 80,000 ethnic Russians.
Another 100,000 ethnic Russians, who already spoke Estonian before the Soviet break-up or learned it since then, have successfully acquired Estonian citizenship through naturalization.
The remaining 100,000 ethnic Russians who can’t get Estonian citizenship and have decided against taking citizenship of Russia, do not carry passports of any country.
Some Estonians have voiced concern about the boom in the number of residents with Russian citizenship, arguing that, in a crisis, Moscow could use their presence at a pretext to apply political and economic pressure.
* Lithuania’s government on January 13 drew up a list of jobs that will be off-limits to former employees of the KGB.
The list complies with controversial legislation passed last year by parliament which calls on the government to implement strict employment bans on members of the once mighty Soviet secret police.
Lithuania’s Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, the Klaipeda state harbor, Lithuanian Gas and Lithuania’s national railroad are among the companies specifically named as being off-limits to ex-KGB.
Lithuanian officials say the restrictions are needed because former KGB agents can’t be trusted and could even attempt to sabotage strategically important companies.
The government will also draw up a system of stiff penalties, including jail terms, for companies that defy the new law and knowingly hire ex-KGB.
Officials have estimated that as many as 4,000 ex-KGB workers in Lithuania could be affected by the restrictions. Informers who were not on the KGB staff are not affected.
Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus initially vetoed the KGB law, saying it appeared to violate constitutional limits on government interference in private business. But after legislators delayed implementation of the law and agreed to submit it to the country’s highest court, he then signed it.
The court is expected to hand down its final ruling on whether the law is constitutional within the next few weeks.
* Parliament in Vilnius appealed to NATO not to apply the terms “former Soviet” and “post-Soviet” to Lithuania, saying the descriptions were historically inaccurate and played into Moscow’s hands.
In a resolution passed on January 12, legislators said Russian leaders had continued to oppose NATO expansion to Lithuania on the grounds that it was once a part of the Soviet Union.
But, said lawmakers, Lithuania and the other Baltic states were occupied by the Soviet Union and so never legally belonged to Moscow. They said NATO should not imply otherwise by using inexact wording in some of its documents and communiqués.
In the early ‘90s, Baltic government based their legal and moral claims to independence on the grounds that they were never legally a part of the Soviet Union.
Toomas H. Ilves, Estonia’s recent foreign minister, has also argued vigorously against applying the term “Soviet” to the Baltic nations, saying the description was “morally and intellectually untenable.”
Added Ilves, speaking at a news conference in Washington last September when he was still foreign minister: “I’d say the Soviet Union was one of the most disgusting and awful things that was ever created, certainly this century. And its death was one of the most wonderful things that has happened.”
* Lithuania on January 13 commemorated the eighth anniversary of the 1991 Soviet crackdown that left 13 independence demonstrators dead.
At ceremonies in Vilnius, President Valdas Adamkus presented some 150 medals to Lithuanians who had helped defend the country during the attack. Among those receiving medals was businesswoman Rita Dapkus, a Lithuanian-American who was the parliament’s press chief at the time.
Current Parliament Speaker Vytautas Landsbergis, who lead Lithuania during the Soviet crackdown, also renewed calls for Russia to investigate ranking Soviet officials for their part in the Vilnius killings. He said Mikhail Gorbachov should be high on the list of subjects to be interrogated.
Landsbergis said Moscow has so far refused to cooperate with Lithuania in its efforts to bring those responsible for the crackdown to justice.
(Also see CRACKDOWN: The Vilnius Massacre Revisited on this web site.)
News Highlights from January 4—January 11, 1999
* Riga’s city government has set up a special phone-in service to survey public opinion about whether to establish legally sanctioned red-light districts for prostitutes.
New national laws call on municipalities to either regulate the sex trade in their cities or ban it, and city officials in the Latvian capital said they wanted local residents to have a say in the matter.
“Views of average people should be heard on something as important as this,” Riga city government spokesman Artis Jurtevics said in a telephone interview on January 8.
There have been some legal restrictions on prostitution, but they have not been enforced. Police in Riga say they have only made two or three arrests in recent years on prostitution-related charges.
Jurtevics said most city lawmakers favored legalizing prostitution, though they want to keep it restricted to certain streets. Some 150 people had called the hotline as of Friday, and most also appeared to oppose an outright ban.
The city also asked callers to recommend streets that it would be suitable to designate as red-light districts. Until now, Riga’s city-center Caka street has been the main, unofficial gathering place for local prostitutes.
Final results of the prostitution poll would be tabulated in the next few days and presented to the city council. Representatives would not be bound by the results of the survey.
Since regaining independence, lawmakers in Latvia have grappled with how to deal with the booming sex industry—which employs more than 10,000 women in the country, according to some estimates.
Sex tourism to Latvia, as well as to the other two Baltic states, has also been on the rise.
Most Latvian politicians have said prostitution is a serious social problem, but one that would become even worse if the sex trade was outlawed and driven underground.
An earlier scheme to introduce special health passports to prostitutes failed. Health workers said the project was badly under-funded.
* Inflation rates in all three Baltic states have hit record lows, indicating that their economies, despite some remaining problems, are continuing to stabilize.
Latvia said recently that its inflation rate for 1998 fell to a mere 2.8 percent—the lowest annual inflation figure among ex-communist states in Eastern and Central Europe.
Lithuania’s rate for 1998 is also expected to be around 5 percent, down from nearly 10 percent for 1997.
As in previous years, Estonia ended the year with the highest rate among the Baltic countries, with prices rising in 1998 at an average of 6.5 percent. The rate is down from about 12 percent in 1997.
The single digit inflation figures are a sharp contrast to just seven years ago, when inflation in all three Baltic countries hovered around 1000 percent.
Quick exits from the ruble zone and generally tight fiscal discipline are credited with bringing Baltic inflation down so dramatically.
* A court in Lithuania on Friday, January 8, called for new medical tests to determine if 92-year-old Aleksandras Lileikis, accused of participating in massacres of Jews during World War II, is fit to stand trial.
The genocide trial was slated to resume Thursday, but Lileikis failed to appear in court. His lawyers said he was seriously ill and physically unable to come to the Vilnius courtroom.
Lileikis, looking frail but mentally alert, did appear in court last November. But after proclaiming his innocence from a wheelchair, he began gasping for air and was rushed away in an ambulance.
After that November incident, court-appointed doctors found Lileikis was mentally and physically fit enough to attend and follow court proceedings. But they also said that the heavy stress of a trial could endanger his life.
The judge in the case appealed Friday for greatly clarity from doctors, asking them to be specific about any diseases Lileikis might be suffering from and to indicate their severity.
According to Lithuanian law, a trial cannot proceed if the accused is incapacitated. Lithuanian law does not provide for trials in absentia when the accused is present in the country.
The medical panel is expected to take at least a month to present its report.
Aleksandras Lileikis headed the Vilnius security police during the German occupation, when he allegedly had hundreds of Jews arrested and turned them over to Nazi execution squads.
Over 90 percent of Lithuania’s 240,000 pre-war Jewish population perished during Nazi rule.
Lileikis emigrated to the United States in 1955, and lived in the Boston area for 40 years. He returned to Lithuania in 1996 as a U.S. court was moving to revoke his citizenship and deport him.
On January 5, another alleged Nazi, Kazys Gimzauskas, also failed to show up for the start of his trial in Vilnius. Judges also ordered a new medical exam in his case after his lawyers said he was ill and confined to bed.
* Estonia has sacked some 300, mostly ethnic Russian policemen who are not Estonian citizens and can’t speak Estonian.
Officials said the move had been anticipated for years, but was taken this past week following a government decision to reduce the size of the police force and raise salary levels of remaining law enforcement employees.
Hundreds of other ethnic-Russian policemen who have learned Estonian and acquired citizenship were not affected by the new dismissal policy.
Russian-speakers, most of whom immigrated to Estonia when it was under Soviet occupation, make up about a third of the nation’s 1.5 million population. Many haven’t qualified for citizenship because they can’t speak Estonian well enough to pass language exams required for naturalization.
The issue of citizenship has been a contentious one in relations between Estonia and Russia. Moscow has repeatedly accused Estonia of discriminating against its Russian-speaking minority. Estonia, backed by many Western observers, has said the discrimination charge is trumped-up and untrue.
During the Soviet era, Estonia’s Moscow-administered police force was almost 80 percent ethnic Russian, and most spoke no Estonian. Officials say policemen can’t do their jobs today if they don’t speak Estonian.
The mass layoffs have left vacancies in some police departments, and officials said they could rehire many of the sacked policemen once they have learned Estonian and secured citizenship.
* To alleviate traffic congestion in the city, Riga is considering building a tunnel under the mighty Daugava river, which flows through the heart of the Latvian capital.
One proposal to construct the tunnel was handed to the city government this past week and is expected to be taken up by a special committee soon.
Traffic in and around Riga’s center has become steadily worse since Latvia regained independence. A boom in car sales coupled with a Soviet-era road system means traffic on many streets regularly comes to a standstill at rush hour.
Many city planners say the problem of traffic congestion, if it is not addressed, will only become worse in coming years.
* Ten Russian children from the northeastern Estonian city of Narva are beginning to live with ethnic Estonian families elsewhere in Estonia, where they are supposed to find refuge from troubled homes.
The scheme, sponsored in part by the Dutch government, is also designed to help Russian children from broken homes integrate into Estonia by familiarizing them with Estonian culture and teaching them Estonian.
After a year, the children are expected to return to their Russian families, who will also undergo counseling.
The immersion project is one of many being considered as a way to help integrate Estonia’s large Russian-speaking population. The government says integration is now one of its highest priorities.
