Thea Grepp, board member of the Estonian Tenants Union, non-partisan
In the April 25 Õhtulehi, Riina Solmani (Isamaa party) said, “The victims should be protected, not the deporter”. He asks in his article: “how is it possible to protect someone who has been proven to have contributed to the deportation of his people?” I answer to Mrs. Solman that there is nothing impossible or difficult here – you just have to make a political decision and everything will go like clockwork.
This is exactly how our property reform was carried out during the so-called return of assets, as a result of which, according to the then Minister of Economy Jaak Leimann, an estimated 100,000 people lost the right to privatize their homes for EVPs, as they now turned out to be living in dwellings gifted to another person (the so-called rightful owner); they remained a forced tenant in the new owner’s house or apartment. The Minister of Economy estimated the volume of this transaction at 10 billion kroons.
In a rule of law, laws must be valid and operate in accordance with the Constitution. No political decision is above the Constitution, but must fit within the framework of the Constitution. When carrying out the property reform, our Constitution is violated in terms of the basic principles of legal certainty, legitimate expectation and equal treatment, as well as the purposeful provision of the Law on the Basis of Property Reform is ignored: the return of assets must not harm the interests of other persons protected by law or cause new injustice. (ORAS §2(2)).
I fully agree with Mrs. Solman that the victims should be protected and not the deporters. But in the course of the property reform, fellow citizens were robbed not only of their home rights, but also of life, health, dreams and future from many as a result of this injustice. Sociologist Aili Aarelaid wrote emotionally about it: “I’m waiting for society to come to its senses and try to sort something out here”. For this purpose, it is appropriate to apply property taxation now.
To this day, those repressed by the authorities of the Republic of Estonia during the property reform have not received compensation for the injustice and damages caused to them. At that time, it was not Juhan Smuul, but President Lennart Meri who gave his blessing for the implementation of this law-abiding criminal reform.
