Marti Mätas 🇪🇪
754 posts
@MartiMatas7
🇪🇪 Diplomat | Deputy Head of Mission @ Beijing 🇨🇳 accredited to 🇲🇳🇻🇳🇹🇭; formerly 🇰🇷🇪🇺. Personal channel for my own views.
#OTD, we remember the more than 20,000 Estonians, who were forcibly deported by the Soviet regime to Siberia in March 1949. Entire families and communities were erased overnight simply for being Estonian. People were driven from their homes at gunpoint, packed into cattle wagons, and sent on a brutal journey across thousands of kilometres. Many never returned. Those who did carried the trauma for the rest of their lives. 77 years later, the Russian regime continues to use the same methods, illegally deporting Ukrainians, especially children, deep into Russia, severing them from their families, their language, and their homeland. Forced labour, indoctrination, and abuse remain common tools in Russia’s arsenal. Today, we honour those who suffered in 1949 and stand with those facing similar crimes in Ukraine. Memory is a form of resistance, and remembering ensures these atrocities are neither forgotten nor repeated. Russia must be held accountable.
Today the publisher #JimmyLai was sentenced in Hong Kong. The MFC previously spoke out about his case in this joint statement on Hong Kong.👇 English: mediafreedomcoalition.org/joint-statemen… French: mediafreedomcoalition.org/fr/declaration…
As the world’s attention turns to the Milano–Cortina Olympic Games, the contrast could not be starker: celebration on the global stage, and a brutal Russian aggression against Ukraine that continues unabated. More than 600 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have been killed or injured, and hundreds of sports facilities have been destroyed while Russian sportsmen are allowed to compete on the Olympic stage. This is not neutrality. It is a choice and it contradicts the values the Olympic Games claim to uphold. Sport is not “outside politics” when authoritarian regimes deliberately weaponize it as a tool of state propaganda and war. The Olympic Games must uphold their values and deny aggressors any opportunity to whitewash crimes through international sport.
