This last weekend past was the one year anniversary of the riots in Tallinn, remember the ones where they moved the old Soviet statue and the young male Russian population of Tallinn went bezerk and trashed the joint?
Its kind of funny because before the event, there wasnt much happening in Tallinn, I mean big and international, if two old guys got together for a farting contest, it would have been on the front of the newspaper. Since then, its all about the "Russian problem" here and whos to blame, what to do about it and most importantly, will the Russian guys try and get their hands on the season 2008 lines from the Gucci store again this year.
I am happy to say that no shit went down over the weekend, the town was peaceful but the police were very obviously out in force, Im pretty sure all coppers had their holidays cancelled for the weekend and you couldnt sneeze without some law enforcement noticaing. They even had the municipal police force out… shit no one even knows what they do, they just ride around all day in bright green cars eating hotdogs from Statoil.
I did see this however, some Russians protesting the governments reaction to the riots, this was down near the harbour, outside Linnahall.
click for larger image
They think the Police acted a bit too harshly, the guys you can see in the larger image are two german dudes who hung around the police line and then got the crap kicked out of them by the cops. I have to say, I dont have a lot of sympathy for the people protesting here. Cop the first photo here, it was a full on riot and when the shit goes down, the police have to do something. If you are innocent and just hanging around when theres a riot going on, dont be surprised when you get caught up in the mix and the cops give you a belting.
At the end of the day, I cant see how the statue situation can be anything else than a political beatup. Ill repeat my comments of one year ago. THE STATUE WAS MOVED, NOT DESTROYED. As I have posted before, its now in a very nice setting inside of the war cemetary, which I think is a fitting place to commerate fallen soldiers, of any nationality. Before the statue was moved it was sitting NEXT TO A BUS STOP. Unless our 10 foot tall bronzed russian friend wanted to get the number 4 tram down to Karidrog park to enjoy the Estonian spring weather we are having here, I think hes better off where he is now.