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 | Speeches | | |
The President of the Republic On the anniversary of March deportation March 25, 2005 at the statue of Linda25.03.2005
Dear fellow countrymen!
Let us, please, have a moment of silence to commemorate all the victims of the deportation.
As the whole Christian world is making preparations for the Easter celebration, our thoughts are simultaneously with Good Friday and the events that happened 56 years ago. Time has not erased from our memory the pain that innocent victims of deportation and their relatives had to suffer. But we know that after sufferings a new hope for happier tomorrow will born again.
During the cold nights of the March 1949 deportation, 20 000 of our fellow countrymen were torn away from their homes. About three-fourth of them were women, children and oldsters who could not have been found guilty by any state or regime. But this was neither the first nor the last act of violence against our people. The results of the deportation that ravaged families and homes will have impact on several more generations that come after us.
According to the researchers the human loss Estonia had during WWII and the following repressions amounted to one fifth of the whole population. Our neighbours shared the same fate and as a result of that Estonia and Latvia are the only states in Europe where the number of indigenous people today is less than it was at the beginning of the 20th century. The representatives of several other ethnic groups for whom Estonia was home shared the same sufferings with the Estonians. This is our history, and we have to know it.
Estonia does not want any confrontation, neither here in the Baltic Sea region nor anywhere else. We wish that the tension in the relations between the countries and the lying and violence would end. Therefore, we talk honestly about our history and defend the principles of democracy that do not tolerate any violence neither in one's own country nor elsewhere.
Democracy means the protection and development of man's right to create. This is the path the Estonian people chose in 1918. We have paid a high price for it, but we shall remain committed to the choice we have made.
Faithfulness is always ennobling. We are standing here together, where the statue of Linda symbolizes faithfulness. Here, at the foot of the Dome Hill, the past and the future, the power and the people, the mother and her progeny, our home and the world meet. It has always given strength to me and to my family. We do not need the state so that we can scold and abuse it, and we do not need freedom so that we can mock at it. We need the state so that we can create, and we have to protect our freedom. I am sure that we are capable to do it.
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