The United States is critical of Estonia's citizenship policy but the government will not be swayed by the criticism, member of the European Parliament from Estonia Yana Toom says.
The newly-released annual human rights report of the U.S. Department of State touched on the questions of statelessness, language policy and situation of ethnic minorities in Estonia, Toom said.
The report says there are around 91,280 stateless persons in Estonia most of whom are ethnic Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians who have lived in this country for a long time. Some human rights observers regard the procedures for naturalization as inadequate, the parliamentarian said.
The Department of State also mentioned what Toom described as a "terminological debate" between the Estonian authorities and the office of the UN high commissioner for refugees: while the UNHCR categorizes holders of the grey or alien's passport as "stateless persons," the Estonian government does not agree, saying they have every possibility to obtain citizenship by naturalization and can enjoy many privileges available to citizens.
The report notes that knowledge of Estonian is required not only to obtain citizenship but also from public servants and other workers who have contact with the public, and the Language Inspectorate enforces language skill requirements by referring persons with insufficient skills to language classes and imposing small fines.
According to Toom the Department of State says that the number of Russian-speakers in blue-collar industries is disproportionately big and that Russian-speakers experience higher unemployment than ethnic Estonians.
"What to say about all this? It's of course good of them to write about 'a few shortcomings' of the policies of a 'friendly government.' But considering how readily our ministers heed other signals of the Big Brother, it has to be admitted that the Department of State's opinion on the situation of non-ethnic Estonians does not reach the Estonian authorities for some reason. Perhaps the problem should be described as a sociological fact rather than the opinion of some 'non-citizens'," Toom said.
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