One of the leaders of the pro-Russian Koos party and Estonian citizen Aivo Peterson was sentenced to 14 years in prison for treason by Harju District Court on Thursday.
The trial, which began in November 2023, dealt with allegations of treason against Estonian citizens Peterson and Dmitri Rootsi, as well as claims that Peterson and Russian citizen Andrei Andronov acted to undermine Estonia’s independence.
The charges were connected to meetings with Russian politicians, aligning policy positions, the organization of an independent civil defense organization, and a Russian-funded press trip to occupied Ukraine.
According to the indictment, Peterson and Rootsi, based on instructions received from Russia, knowingly and in an organized manner assisted Russia and people acting on behalf of Russian authorities in non-violent activities directed against the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Estonia from October 2022 to March 10, 2023.
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Judging from the comments, I’m probably going to get hated for saying this, but …I don’t like this. This is antidemocratic and dangerous.
Here is my frame of reference: Balkan nationalist paranoia.
The allegations against this guy remind me too much of the allegations raised by Greek nationalists against Macedonian-speakers in Greece during the times before the Prespa Agreement. They were trying to create a political party to promote language rights, at a time when Greece was being paranoid about North Macedonia claiming Greek Macedonia. The nationalists saw Kosovo taken from Serbia and decided they would never let this happen to Greece. People literally believed the Americans were out to redraw maps on the Balkans and were going to use minorities to break up greece. So, make a slavophone party? Traitor. Works for “FYROM”. Threatens Greek sovereignty.
Very similar dynamics are still going on with any kind of Muslim political movement calling itself Turkish. Immediately the Greek nationalists will label them Erdogan agents. Traitors who threaten Greek sovereignty.
Thankfully, the Greek state is actually not as paranoid for the most part. But if the ultranationalists got their way, this is exactly the kind of treatment they would like to inflict on any kind of minority political organizing.
Ultimately, this is a political persecution. We see these kinds of persecutions in Turkey, against the Kurds for example. Or in Albania against the Greek minority in past decades.
The guy’s crimes are all in the political sphere. Non violent. Subject to the democratic process. This smells very bad and will very likely backfire politically. The guy is now going to be treated as a politician prisoner by the Russian propaganda machine. Used as proof that European democracy is not all that it claims to be. This is bad. I hope he appeals to the European Court of Justice, gets released and then fades to the obscurity he deserves.
What I’m seeing here isn’t an assessment of the issue at hand, but rather a pretext to grind an axe about different political issues.
“Reminds me of…” is doing too much heavy lifting…you skipped over the connective tissue.
If you want to insinuate I’m some kind of putinist can you please just say that? The passive aggressive innuendo is just annoying.
I’m some guy commenting on Lemmy based my experiences. I’m not a think tank, a social scientist or a political analyst. I said that I don’t like this that I have a bad feeling about this. Them I gave the context from which I’m taking that position, to explain where my distrust is coming for.
FFS
I meant what I said. I didn’t say or insinuate anything about Putin.
Clarify this then, please? The way I read it is that you are saying I have some self-centred ulterior motive, some kind of hidden agenda. That I don’t give a shit about the actual topic at hand (pretext) and I just weaponize it (axe to grind) for my nefarious goals (different political issues). That’s what I called passive aggressive innuendo.
It wasn’t a complicated comment.
You piggy backed off of the topic to talk about different issues…and I didn’t see how the issues you were talking about and the topic were related.
I guess it’s not surprising that you’re reading too much into my comment, given how much you read into the topic.
Only I didn’t. Here is what I actully wrote
That’s it. It’s not a complicated comment either.
From my point of view, your response is passive aggressive innuendo that I am being suspicious. Maybe I’m a troll or a tankie or a putin stooge right? Because that’s exactly what the people who started riffing off what you wrote about pretexts and axes to grind started doing. They started talking about my post history, modlog, spin, and saying I’m engaging in bad faith and whataboutism. Fucking dogpiling. Am I wrong to demand clarifications?
EDIT: If your claim is simply that my historical comparisons don’t apply to Estonia’s security context, say that. That’s an argument I can engage with. But implying ulterior motives and then refusing to specify them isn’t critique, it’s suspicion-by-proxy. I’m here to discuss the post, not litigate my character.
I don’t agree that Estonia should bow to the spectre of Russian retribution, and ignore their own laws. The notion that the goalposts should be moved is a slippery slope. Sounds a lot like appeasement. It’s a little odd to use the Estonian characterization of his actions being non-violent…it’s not appropriate…given part of the issue is a paramilitary force.
I still don’t get how the Estonian situation relates to the bulk of your post.
Here is what the article says:
What were those activities?
Political speech. To create a political party. That would participate in Estonian democratic processes. The political positions of that party are, I think we would agree, very problematic: promoting Russian narratives, pushing the Estonian policy in pro-Russian directions etc. But political positions cannot be crimes in a democracy. And freedom of expression is a fundamental human right. And above all, this is about political speech in the context of a democratic political process, where other political parties would be able to counter it, pitch a better set of ideas to the electorate, and defeat this party at the ballot box. In democracies, you defeat political positions with politics, not with prison sentences.
They didn’t create the organization. They did not do crimes. They were planning to create an organization with goals that frankly with a bit of good faith sound benign (aid people in crises, fulfill defense tasks in case of vacuum). But sure, they were probably not that benign and pro-russian stooges don’t necessarily deserve good faith. But that’s beside the point. Notice this very crucial detail: “The organization would have involved individuals holding firearms licenses.” In other words: the Estonian government could at any point control these people’s access to weapons. The police and security services could keep a hawkish eye on them and throw the book at them with the full force of the law the moment they step outside the law. But convict them for doing something. I mean, there is a LOT of space for the Estonian government to maneuver before rushing to sentencing someone to …14 years in prison for the thought crime of imagining a militia.
That’s it. Those are the two substantive allegations made in the article. The rest are about meeting with Russian politicians in furtherance to these aims. In other words, they are aggravating conditions to these two crimes. So we have two crimes: political speech and imagining a militia. Both of those should not be worth 14 years in prison in a democracy. Sorry, but this is not what justice should look like in an EU country. For comparison: the violent neonazis in Germany of the Revolution Chemnitz group received less than half of that for actual violent crimes. Nazis. In Germany. Violent ones. This guy’s 14 years is wildly disproportionate.
Democratic norms, rule of law, civil rights, freedom of expression and of association, freedom to play the democratic game, these are not jokes, they are not negotiable.
To me the comparison is suitable because like Estonia, Greece was once part of a bigger empire and got independence. Unlike with Estonia, there are still unsettled claims and there were bloody conflicts about citizenry. So the tensions should be higher. Which means that if Greeks judge similar situations differently it’s worth having a second look.
Just look at @acargitz/@theacharnian@lemmy.ca’s post history. Their comments have all the same spin.
I had a look and I see a bunch of posts from left-wing-but-not-tankie sources, criticism of Israel, America, and Russia, opposition to antisemitism. I demand you make an accusation more specific than ‘too much nuance and support for the civil rights of our political opponents’.
What about their ban in “Europe” for bad faith? Edit: After rereading, it was calls for violence against Israeli institutions, not Israelis. So I removed that part of my comment.
That’s what the mod said I was doing. That’s not what I was doing. I was referring to apartheid institutions and I was talking about the legitimate right of conquered people to use violence within the limits of international treaties to defend themselves and on the same breath I was saying long live all the people of all faiths free and happy.
But this is a profoundly ridiculous turn for this thread. You’re scrutinizing my sparse modlog instead of engaging with my actual arguments. That’s bad faith and ad hominem. If you need to go look at the one time my comments were too edgy for a mod’s liking to discount what I have to say here in this thread, that says more about your lack of a real counter-argument.
You should pipe down instead of trying to turn this into a fight.
I love the smell of condescension in the morning.
Do you have a link for the Israeli violence one? ‘Bad Faith’ could very well mean ‘Disagreeing with my narrative’, and given how common that kind of thing is I’m not inclined to take the opinion of a moderator at face value unless you’ve got a link for that one, too.
In modlog “repeatedly advocating violence”. Okay I correct myself, its not against Israelis but against Israel itself, which can be pretty iffy depending on the context of the conversation.
Which is?
Can you please link two example comments of what you mean?
*edit: at first compared the wrong account.
Yeah looking at their moderation history, it looks like they havent really learned from past mistakes.
There is one “bad faith//whatabouting”. What am I missing?
Yes, and I am seeing bad faith arguments and whataboutism here from them.
Whataboutism is responding to an accusation with a counter-accusation. I have literally not done that anywhere in this thread.
I am also very curious to know what you think are “bad faith” comments I have made in this thread. The only bad faith has been directed at me, where instead of people engaging in argument, they have been scrutinizing my character and using passive aggressive inuendo as if I am only saying what I’m saying because I have some ulterior motive.
Spinning people who are literally in cohoots with belligerent powers as misunderstood or framed is one example. But yeah, I am not going to engage any further in this discussion.
That’s not what I said though?
What is wrong about putting someone in prison for plotting to overthrow the government or to aid in the cessation of national sovereignty?
If we’re talking about an actual plot, an actionable conspiracy, a plan that says this guy, that guy and that guy, on that day, with those guns, etc, then there is nothing wrong with it. If we’re talking in other words about a conspiracy for a coup d’état, then nothing wrong with foiling and punishing. But between that and forming a political party that advocates for this and that policy, and then puts it to the electorate through a democratic process, there is a LOT of space. Lumping all of that space in a single pot of traitors is extremely dangerous for democracy. That’s how you get McCarthyism, that’s frankly exactly how you get Putinism. Reading the descriptions of this case, this looks more like some shade of light grey.
And when it comes to “cessession of national sovereignty”, that’s even more vague. In Quebec, there is an active independence movement. That would be an infringement in Canadian national sovereignty. In Alberta there are idiots who argue for the 51st state bullshit. In Catalonia they talk about ending Spanish sovereignty. In Corsica, in Basque, in Scotland, I could go on. A democracy has ways of handling these that are not “call them traitors and put them in jail”. For the far right, participation in international organisations like the EU or in the United States even participation in the UN is often brought up as cessation of national sovereignty.
Basically, what I’m saying is the question that you’re asking sounds simple but it is nowhere near simple.
Very fair take
Learn the difference between cessation and cessession
I brought up cessessionist movements as examples of cases where there is a legitimate case for protecting national sovereignty against a minority that doesn’t see itself in the bigger national polity. For nationalists cessession is cessation.
But my argument is not limited to cessassionist movements. I also mention the 51st state idiots that are actually very close parallels to the Estonian case.