U.S. State Department: No Discrimination against Russians in Estonia

[Harold F. Schiffman]

U.S. State Department: No Discrimination against Russians in Estonia

March 9th, 2007

Postimees discusses the recently-released annual U.S. State Department
report (or series of reports) on human rights around the world, and notes
that it clears Estonia of the charge of discriminating against its
Russian-speaking citizens. From the report itself:

Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are the largest ethnic minorities,
making up 29 percent of the population. The government pursued a policy of
social integration, particularly through its language policy which
requires knowledge of Estonian in order to obtain citizenship and mandates
that all public servants and public sector employees, service personnel,
medical professionals, and sole proprietors use the Estonian language.
Actual proficiency is usually determined through examination; however,
citizenship applicants who have previously passed the basic level Estonian
language proficiency examination or the basic school final examination for
Estonian as a second language no longer have to take the citizenship
language exam. Some noncitizen residents, particularly ethnic Russians,
continued to allege that the language requirement resulted in job and
salary discrimination.

http://halldor2.wordpress.com/2007/03/09/us-state-department-no-discrimination-against-russians-in-estonia/

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URL for the report:
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/3/ae06072a-27e6-4060-9d8f-089a58fd27d2.html