Firts stories of the night of riots: Aleksei Rattik and Juri Zuravljov
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Alexei Rattik: When I was in city center I was just walking home and the police was standing on different sides trying to catch people. I was there and I tried immediately to go away from there as they were shooting with rubber bullets so I started to run but the police came too close to me and I’ve seen that I couldn’t escape. So I lied on the ground and put my hands on my head.
The policeman tried to take me up with an iron stick and he told me “Go on the road” where the police was shooting and kicking people, but I said “I won’t stand up” and he understood that there was nothing he could do.
When we were on the ground with our hands tied some people got beaten in the back and the legs and when they brought us to the barracks I have seen people from Germany and Finland who didn’t understand Estonian and had some problems because of that.
They told them to stay on stay down on their knees but they didn’t understand it and so they tried to talk to the police in English but they still went on talking in Estonian started beating them.
They beaten me few times when I was there because we have seen that they were kicking one girl and so everybody stood up and shouted “don’t touch the girl”: as the result they left the girl but they started kicking us in the back.
A doctor came there I think maybe 2 hours later while police was telling to some Estonian guys that they would have paid them 80eek per hour and gave them a police yellow jacket and a stick for their help: I have even 2 skinheads with police uniforms kicking everybody and I have pictures and videos of it in my phone.
Jury Zuravljov
I was arrested (23.25) while I was peaceful in street: the police took all the people in the street, not only who was protesting, and this is against any law, but when we asked for lawyers they laughed at us.
In the barrack 19-6 we were at first approximately 300 - 350 persons while in the morning we were approximately 500 all together.
There were 3 kinds of police there: normal police in yellow jackets, people in civil clothes with yellow jackets on and special police with metal sticks.
In some moments it was very cruel: for example they took a young a young girl and they put her on the ground, they beat her for five minutes and after she was left in a corner without moving. In such cruel moments all the people went to the head shouting very loud and trying to move, so other police came to reestablish order and they stopped to beat her.
There was also an old journalist there, they beat him till blood: he tried to ask for the names of the officers but they just smiled at him and went away.
There was a guy who has been beaten and then left on the ground: I saw him at first around 4am and he didn’t move, then someone told me that at 6am he was still there. At the moment we have 6 lost people and maybe in one or two months some dead bodies will be found and maybe one of those will be this man.
We have pictures of the blood on the ground and on the walls: we have all the evidences. It’s a nazi radical government and we are trying to build a common statement for pursue the police for what is happened.
Three leaders of NIghtwatch have been arrested and one is in the hospital with 4 policemen outside his room. When we tried to know something about him, a doctor said to his wife that he wasn’t allowed to give her any information
These nights are calmer, but all the hates is still there it lives in us now and something else will happen, this terror won’t break us: we keep everything in our heart, this beating won’t defeat us.
There is also a partisan movement that is being formed for starting a partisan to make this government resign: it’s not Russia against Estonia, the problem is the Ansip government and it has to leave the power.
Margarita Sokolova, Giovanni Angioni - Tallinn