At least RT reported that the doctor was fired for his actions. It's a shame though that this is the only stuff Russians read about Estonia. Only a negative image can presented of a state that despite huge historical hardships has been mostly successful.

I am glad that this kind of foolish and hurtful behaviour by the doctor was not tolerated. Not that the the following justifies the doctor’s actions – but I wonder what he and his family might have suffered during the long years when everyone’s Estonian passports were trashed by Moscow, and when Estonians found it impossible to get medical help, organise a taxi trip or even buy a postage stamp in their own country in their own language.

The punishment for such an action in the UK is to appear before the general medical council's fitness to practice panel. The doctor broke the basic law of not discriminating based on race, religion, social status or nationality. Punishment is been struck off the register. Been fired is a smack on the wrist. It would be interesting on how the medical profession is regulated in Estonia and what exactly they would consider a grieve offence. Physician's oath aka Hippocratic ammended oath has clearly been violated in this case

As Estonia is a member of the EU, they are required to observe the EU Charter of fundemental human rights - here's an extract: "The Union shall respect cultural, religious and linguistic diversity." Of course, Latvia has found a loophole by denying citizenship to a substantial number of people but that may well be challenged if some of those people were to apply for refugee status in western Europe. Marzipan6: How is it that the Estonian language has survived at all amongst such a small population if Estonian language and culture was as oppressed as much you suggest?

to Sam Please pay attention that medical aid was not denied and Hippocratic oath not violated. Not that I am justifying the doctor, it was clearly not the right time and place to make a point that Estonian passports are handed out too liberally. to JG Keeping the language alive during all those years of occupation might be considered a miracle. Certainly it was not thanks to Soviet Union that the language was preserved: just look at the sorry state of small languages in today's Russia.

Dear Wiking, you do not need to deny medical aid before you violate the oath. Just showing preference for one type of patient will do it.The fifth paragraph of the oath goes- "I will not permit considerations of religion, nationality, race, party politics or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient" even if he treated him, that oath has been broken. He let nationality get in the way of his attitude to the child, how do we know he gave him the right treatment after that. third paragraph-I will practise my profession with conscience and dignity; the health of my patient will be my first consideration. That was not his first consideration, the first consideration to him was that the boy did not speak estonian. the fourth is-"I will maintain by all the means in my power, the honour and the noble traditions of the medical profession; my colleagues will be my brothers" Hmm thats not how a doctor should act. Again in the UK he will be before the GMC so fast his head will spin.

M6 & Wiking Was not Estonian language a mandatory class in Soviet Estonia's schools? Can you provide any example when an Estonian was denied a Soviet citizenship based on a fact that she or he didn't speak Russian well? If you can't, then you both should admit that the current Estonian state is much worse for many people living there than Soviet Estonia was.

Sam, Estonia was ruled by a German-speaking aristocracy from the 13th century up until the early 20th century. After their initial religious microstates collapsed in the Livonian War of the 16th century, they pledged allegience first to the King of Sweden (Estonia was part of Sweden from 1561 to 1721) and then to the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1918. They made both deals to guarantee their privileges. Both the Swedish and Russian monarchs tried to chip away at the special rights of the German ruling class. When Russian rule started to wear on them, they began to look towards the German Federation. But up until the mid-1880s, German was the language of administration in Estonia. For all this talk of Estonia being part of Russia, prior to gaining independence, Russian was only the language of administration in Estonia for less than three decades in its history -- from 1886 to 1918. So your question really is, how come the Estonians didn't become Germans? The reality is that some of them did. Those who were able to escape the restrictions of serfdom, which lasted until 1813, and achieve some education took Germans as wives, took German names, and for, most purposes, lived as Germans. I am sure many Estonian women became German the same way. But the Baltic German aristocracy was a small, monied class. German was the language of administrators and doctors and merchants. Estonian was the language of the help. I know my narrative smacks of Marxism, but, don't forget, the Estonian state emerged between the revolutions of 1905 and 1918.

Wiking - No Sam is correct, the doctor has to offer the same quality and level of care to all without dicrimination. JG - It is easily understandable why the Estonian language flourished, the Soviets maintained education in Estonian. Education is always the starting point for maintaining a language. This wasn't a miracle, just the classic Soviet planning, with Bilingualism as its policy. Other factors also helped like the close linked culturally autonomous communities. Remember this is in huge contrast to countries like Britain, who had an active policy to wipe out the Welsh language from their landscapes.

Grizzly Bear writes comedy. He asks, “Can you provide any example when an Estonian was denied a Soviet citizenship based on a fact that she or he didn't speak Russian well?” Estonians wished with all their heart that all of them had been “denied a Soviet citizenship.” Oddly enough, they did not want their own nation invaded, their freedom smashed, their government murdered, tens of thousands of civilians, from babes in arm to people in their 90s transported in cattle cars to Siberia where most of them died, and all the rest of the population sealed from the world behind an iron curtain. They did not want irreplacable Estonian books burned by the thousands in orgies of Soviet cultural barbarity. They did not wish to see the quotient of Estonian language education steadily reduced, the publication of Estonian books, newspapers and magazines reduced to a trickle, their country overflooded with uninvited colonists who were well on the way to turning Estonians into a minority within their own land. They did not wish to have the language of the land steadily changed to Russian to where they increasingly could no longer even do shopping, let along transact any official business, in their own language, or the economy of their country trashed close to Russia’s own levels of poverty. Strangely enough, they did not want any of this and did not choose it. It was forced on them by Soviet guns, and kept in place by Soviet terror. If the Soviet occupation had lasted perhaps another 20 or 30 years, the possibility of reviving Estonian nationhood would have been impossible, because the accumulated damage would have been just too great. Estonia, along with its unique language and culture, would have withered and died like so many other cultures and peoples have within the stifling Soviet embrace. All this was forced on Estonians at the point of Soviet guns and terror. But I got to hand it to Grizzly Bear – not a one of them was ever denied Soviet citizenship.

to Sam Once again, it was wrong time and place for doctor to express it opinion on citizenship rules. However, your speculations that maybe he did not give the boy a right treatment are ridiculous. to GrizzlyBear-r-r --- Can you provide any example when an Estonian was denied a Soviet citizenship based on a fact that she or he didn't speak Russian well? Please tell me that you are joking by implying that having Soviet citizenship was a blessing for Estonians?! And I admit that current Estonian Repulic is worst for Soviet people than Soviet Union was. By Soviet people I mean people who still do not understand that they do not live in Russia or Soviet Union, but in independent country where one should know the language of this country. Soviet mentality does not allow them to learn it, since to them, Russian language should still be the language of the masters in Estonia as during the Soviet times. Same poeple go to work to Finland and learn the Finnish language (even more complicated than Estonian), but lear nEstonian for Soviet people is degrading. So they don't. Instead they choose to complain that Estonians are nazis since they tell them to learn and speak Estonian in Estonia.

Dear Giustino have no idea what your lecture has to do with my comment on the behaviour of this surgeon. Wiking why is it ridiculous? He had already broken at least 3 oaths in regards to the child and expressed his dislike for the child. For all I know he is another Dr. Shipman. As a professional colleague of this chap in more then one way, am sickened by his behaviour. I see many on daily bases from all over the world many of which have british citizenship and yet speak little or no english. If I try something like that, I will face the GMC and rightly so. As for other languages been oppressed in the USSR, very odd since I have a collection of Soviet Rubles and guess what, it had all the other languages also written on it.Also I do believe other languages where studied in the the local schools which would explain why every single ethnic group can read and write in their own language.Break up of the USSR did not produce nations where the majority where not literate in their own language. Why is that. As far as been oppressed by the russians within the USSR, how odd that almost every leader of the USSR was non Russian.

M6 & Wiking, You both are trying to switch the subject seamlessly and shamelessly. It's not about how much Estonians liked Soviet state, it's about discrimination based on native spoken language. Apparently, for the current Estonia it's a big problem, while for Soviet Estonia it was not. What really makes me laugh is the Wiking statement that only miracle helped preserving Estonian language during the Soviet era. You should both try harder, if want to present Estonia as a democratic state. It looks like a Nazi one to me.

Sam, I’m afraid your bias is showing – and badly. No one on this forum defends the doctor’s actions. No one at the hospital defends it – as the article points out, the head of the hospital personally apologised to the family and to all who were affected by the event. No one was denied medical service. Yet you do not acknowledge this. Nor do you acknowledge that the very event itself, as well as highlighting the aberration of one man, showcases the fact that even Russian people who do not speak Estonian adequately nevertheless have full Estonian citizenship. That doesn’t seem to fit very well with standard Russian propaganda, does it? Perhaps these factual matters are overridden by the contrived demonic picture with which RT chose to illustrate its article (Nazi Germany cooked up similar pictures of people of their favourite ethnicity too, remember?). I guess in this case a lying picture speaks more than a thousand fairly accurate words. And I guess you choose to believe that frankly evil visual propaganda spin because it suits your own personal anti-Estonian bias. If I’m wrong, do please let us know.

Dear Marzipan, The way I see it, you Estonians are actually making escuses for the doctor while condemning his actions, like Wiking said "Once again, it was wrong time and place for doctor to express it opinion on citizenship rules" As for the punishment, as I said it is a slap on the wrist, he is free to go to another hospital and continue his behaviour. Is the Estonian medical council or what ever it is called taking any action against him? No as far as I know. The firing and apology is just a showcase for the media and not a punishment at all. As you can see, until my last comment I stayed clear of the political aspect of the case, so biased against who? The doctor? yes cos he is not fit to practice and his punishment is not actually a punishment.Do you know how long a doctor remains unemployed after leaving a job? minutes. So to him its just change of jobs and thats all.

All of this arguing about languages misses the point: Estonians did not write the constitution of the ESSR that made Russian an official language in 1940, Andrei Zhdanov, party boss of Leningrad and Soviet emissary to oversee the occupation and annexation of the country, wrote it. That is to say that that law never had any domestic legitimacy. There was no popular decision to make that law. It was a law imposed by a foreign occupation authority and approved by a 'parliament' whose members were selected by the Soviet embassy in Tallinn. That's the story of Soviet 'bilingualism' in Estonia. Estonia was hardly bilingual then, anyway. 8 percent of the population claimed Russian heritage in 1934. The current language regime came back into force during the Soviet era in 1989. It was continued by the restored state. At that time the concern was that "official bilingualism" was a farce; that Estonians were unable to access the same services in their native language as Russophones. It was mandated that all civil servants should be able to operate in Estonian within two years, the assumption being that they already could operate in Russian. That bill was approved by lifelong communist politician Arnold Rüütel, ie. not a "Nazi." To conclude, I'll just say that I am a foreigner and I live in this country and have no problems. And jah, ma oskan eesti keelt. Loomalikult. It's a shame what that doctor did to that kid. He's a real jerk. But he did get fired and it was frontpage news in Estonia. I am glad that RT actually reported that he was reprimanded and the hospital apologized. Usually Russian media leaves facts like that out.

I don’t need to “present Estonia as a democratic state,” as Estonia presents itself, and the best way for GrizzlyBear to understand it is simply to visit it and believe the evidence of his own eyes. Nor do my posts represent a change of subject – they are absolutely on the subject, and so are Wiking’s. The subject is a country that was occupied, brutalised, destroyed as a nation and steadily pushed towards the brink of cultural extinction until, by a miracle (there is no other word for it) it was able to recover itself from permanent annihilation and re-establish itself as a nation. It is now in the process of healing the grievous wounds that were struck into it by Soviet Moscow. These wounds – economic, political, social, spiritual, ecological – will take decades yet to be finally healed. In the meantime post-Soviet Moscow, in the service of a frankly cowardly attempt to hide from its own past and present responsibilities in regard to its neighbours, does everything it can to make the task harder. The RT article illustrates a case in point. Estonia is trying to assimilate the huge numbers of aliens dumped in its borders without its permission during the Soviet occupation. Most of those people were totally indifferent to Estonian ways, and the rest were actively antagonistic. Their sole orientation was to socially engineer Estonia into being just a province of Russia, and most thought that it was so already. Newcomers now have to think of themselves as ordinary people instead of colonial overlords, and some find the concept challenging. Meanwhile Estonians have to forget about the horrors caused by the occupation regime and help the former colonists to integrate, and some find that concept also challenging. Meanwhile, Moscow does its best to keep stirring the pot, demonizing Estonians and stirring up Russians. Hence the article – and our response to it.

Since concepts of Estonian culture are central to the issue that this article covers, it may be helpful I provide a brief overview of it. Estonia is a vulnerable, undefendable territory, and sits on a geographic cross-roads between East and West. It is small and surrounded by large nations, many of whom are extremely predatory by nature. And yet after thousands of years of this scenario, Estonia still exists. There has to be a reason for it. That reason is not its military strength, nor the goodness of heart of its neighbours. Rather, the reason is its culture. This maybe strange for others to grasp, but Estonians have always viewed their culture as their primary means of self-preservation. Invaders by the dozen have crashed over their borders, some staying for only weeks, some for centuries, all of them disdainful of the local people and most of them very brutal in their occupation. But few have bothered to learn the local language or itegrate socially. Thus Estonians had a barrier between them and their oppressors, and were able to maintain a self-awareness and a connection amongst themselves of which foreigners didn’t even try to penetrate. It is this that has enabled them to survive as a nation. Estonians value their language very, very highly. Not only is it unique in the world, but if it ever was to disappear, the culture that it supports would also disappear. And once that is gone, so is Estonia as a nation. It will have no way left to preserve itself, and Estonians will simply become Russians or Germans or Swedes or Poles or whoever the dominant occupier of the time might be. That’s why Estonians absolutely insist that the language of their country remains Estonian. Newcomers are welcome, and they are invited to learn the language and become fully a part of the Estonian nation, contributing to its vitality. They are not welcome to change Estonia into another country. This, of course, irks Moscow hugely, because dreams of empire die hard.

Sam, no doubt the way you see the matter is sincere. However, I suspect that your sincere viewpoint is not informed by having seen first-hand what the lives, the inter-action and the attitudes of the people are like, what the institutions, laws and norms of the country are, or seeing how things actually work. Rather, your views are likely to be informed by Moscow’s endless torrent of anti-Estonian spleen. You probably think that such vitriol is a fairly balanced account of matters, forgetting the propaganda’s Stalinist pedigree and post-Soviet Russia’s motives of self-justification that drive it. It is not surprising if your sincere viewpoint is therefore sincerely mistaken. No one is making excuses for the doctor, Sam. His actions were hurtful, unprofessional and wrong. But there are underlying reasons those actions just as there are for everything that happens on the planet. Those underlying reasons explain how “B” follows on from “A”, but as in this case, do not always justify or excuse the progression. Estonians, like everybody, have their foibles, fears and insecurities. These, together with the pain of the past and worry for the future, can sometimes make it hard to see some things from the perspective of Russian neighbours. But throughout their long history, persecution and victimization of others have always been abhorrent to their psyche, and have no part in their values system – Russian propaganda notwithstanding. Most Estonians would have been simply ashamed of the doctor’s actions. Many remember how it felt to be unable to receive medical care in Soviet years because they could not make themselves understood in the Russian language, and they have no wish to inflict a similar hurt on others. Unlike you, I am not sure that one social stupidity, even if hurtful, should debar a man from practising his profession forever. But dismissal from his current job, together with the financial and social upheaval associated with it, is appropriate.