Today, on the Day of Mourning 2007, there is once again reason to gather at the pedestal of the statue of the mourning Linda and at other commemoration sites all over Estonia. Although mourning and anguish and tragic memories join us here every year anew, this day is also a day for drawing significant conclusions.

The main lesson taught to us by the innocent victims of Communism is that to a state based on the rule of law, and to democracy, there is no alternative. Otherwise we cannot prevent such horrors from occurring. Let us not forget: although in Estonia there were specific persons behind the repressions, although tens of thousands of people suffered for the repressions, it takes a totalitarian system for such things to happen, a state without liberties - an absence of democracy.

And this is not a special truth of Estonia, not a special case. More than a hundred million people all over the world have perished under the terror of Communist regimes. And they will be remembered. The day before yesterday, an international memorial for the victims of Communism was opened on Capitol Hill at Washington, the founding of which has also been supported by Estonia.

The actions of all Communist tyrannies are thus aligned, whether these have happened in Europe, Asia or elsewhere, among others the Berlin Wall as a symbol of disrupting countries and people, which divided people into the free and the subdued, as well as all the tragic events taking place in Estonia for half a century starting from the summer of 1940.

The strongest defence against all of that is a free, democratic world, which Estonia firmly belongs to.


Toomas Hendrik Ilves
Ene Ergma
Andrus Ansip

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