Interfax 19 May, 2007

Latvian party voices support for Tallinn monument defenders

RIGA . May 19 (Interfax/BNS) - A Latvian party that was formed on Saturday via the merger of two groups passed a resolution expressing support for Estonian activists who were arrested during protests against the relocation of a Soviet World War II memorial that stood in the center of Tallinn.

The resolution was issued at a unification congress where two parties, - Equality and Free Choice of Peoples in Europe (BITE), - which until then formed a coalition called For Human Rights in a United Latvia, merged to form a single party with the same name.

Members of Estonian organization Night Watch, set up to defend the Tallinn monument, were present at the congress.

Estonian police arrested nearly 1,200 people during mass riots in Tallinn that broke out on April 26 after authorities began to exhume the remains of Soviet soldiers buried in a mass grave at the memorial in order to move them to a military cemetery outside the capital.

A statue of a Soviet soldier that stood near the grave was moved to the same cemetery.