One can reject outright the position of the anti-refugee group, but one must also consider the near history of Estonia and what a large, imposed influx of foreigners means to a small nation.
Fear is fueling the passions of those opposing refugees it's said. It highlights the possible loss of language, the loss of culture based on language, the loss of a national identity. The “opposition” knows it can happen, reminding one of the Soviet experience, of outsiders forcing a nation to abandon its indigenous cultural essence. Many insist that with the Soviet occupation of 1944 to 1991, thousands of Estonians were displaced and perished in Siberian labour camps. They were replaced by workers from Russia and other Soviet satellite states thus profoundly changing the country's ethnic face. Those opposing refugees point out that Estonia was forced to take in an abundance of foreigners, why should they be forced to take in more?
Eerik Niiles Kross is blunt when he suggests that those Estonians “who claim that accepting 700 (sic) war refugees is beyond (Estonia's) means and could irreversibly change the Estonian society is, forgive me for saying so, idiotic”.
Kross has identified three distinct approaches amidst the shrill public debate on how to cope with the effects of Europe's the refugee crisis on Estonia.
The first and loudest protests come from the those that oppose any refugees being allowed into the country. Kross says that they are mainly ruled by fear. He presents a few quotes from this group: “Genocide against the white race is gaining force and apparently they want to get rid of us in a generation or two.” “Send the unhappy refugees who have become animals back to their homes! We are not racists. We do not hate other nations.” Critics have suggested that these comments clearly exhibit racist tendencies especially to the sensitive ears within the EU.
Kross sees a second group of protesters to the influx of refugees as those seeking alternative solutions to the problem. They see the solution tied directly to eliminating the underlying problem. For instance, the West has certainly contributed to the humanitarian disaster causing this massive refugee bottleneck. By crippling Libya through bombings, eliminating governmental authority, and withdrawing prematurely the West abandoned the population to chaotic political rivalries.
A viable alternative could be an increased and better distribution of relief to the over 5.7 million refugees in camps in Turkey, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon and elsewhere. But, Kross states, alleviating conditions in refugee camps is not eliminating the causes generating the millions of refugees. This would necessitate an overwhelming military intervention in destroying ISIS, for instance, and would require the restructuring of Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, something the USA or EU are not prepared to undertake.
The third category of protesters, according to Kross, are those who see serious faults in the way refugee quotas are calculated. They advocate for the elimination of inequities, for honesty in refugee policies and a system that recognizes the vital importance of the “real interests of Estonia”. However Kross believes that a large part of the population, driven by fear, historical abuse, isolation, racism, oppose accepting any refugees because they are coming, attracted by the abundant “social assistance”. Kross believes that those espousing the “little white society” of Estonia as an excuse for rejecting refugees will marginalize Estonia in Europe.
(to be continued)
Laas Leivat
