In March, 73 years ago, thousands of Estonian families were split and packed into cattle cars. Men were shipped to one remote Russian destination, women and children to another. Moscow called it Operation Priboi.
The co-ordinated mass deportations from occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were executed in territories occupied by the Red Army. Ukrainians are now taken from territories occupied by the Russian army. History repeated in real time.
A total of half-million residents of the three Baltic countries were deported between 1941 and 1952. The total for Ukraine has yet to be established.
The far-flung chain of hundreds of labour camps, the destination for Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians deported in the 1940s and 1950s, later named the Gulag by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, is now mirrored by numerous camps stretching from Belarus to the Kamchatka on the Pacific, the locations for Ukrainian deportees.
Human rights organizations put the total at 1.2 million who were deported against their own will. This total is difficult to verify. It includes 210,000 children. For Estonia in 1949, 70% of the deportees were children, including a three-month infant. A 97-year-old man also met the criteria to be shipped elsewhere.
Moscow is well aware that the 1949 Geneva Convention, which established legal standards for humanitarian treatment in conflict, strictly prohibits the mass forcible relocation of civilians to the territory of the occupying power. Violation of this is classified as a war crime.
(Pikemalt saab lugeda Eesti Elu 20. mai 2022 paber- ja PDF/digilehest)
