Amnesty criticises Estonia

Amnesty International has written a letter to Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, complaining that the Estonian language tests the country's Russian minority has to undergo are too rigorous. According to Erkki Bahovski, Amnesty's arguments are weak. "The example of the taxi driver who can't speak a word of Estonian is very strange, to say the least. Am I to be forced to speak Russian when I get into a taxi? And if there was a Muslim community in Estonia would Amnesty demand that Estonian women wear veils? Certainly, it's not as if everything's wonderful in Estonia and the country has done everything possible to accommodate its Russian citizens. Language courses are still very expensive and there's still a lot of red tape before people are granted Estonian citizenship. However, it wouldn't be a bad thing to remind Moscow that Amnesty is also drawing attention to the situation in Chechnya. That's where the problems are, not in Estonia."

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