The Union of Non-Citizens has been created in Estonia, NewsBalt reports. It was headed by documentary filmmaker Oleg Besedin, the author of such films as “Breakthrough” (about the passage of ships of the Baltic Fleet through the Gulf of Finland in August 1941) and “The Hidden History of the Baltic States” (about nationalism in the countries of the region).

The organization, as its leader said, will operate jointly with a similar association in Latvia (the Congress of Non-Citizens). Let us remember that the Congress was created in the spring of 2013. Its representatives called the elimination of the institution of statelessness in the country their main goal.

According to Besedin, more than 90 thousand non-citizens live in Estonia. This is more than six percent of the country's population.

In Estonia, as in Latvia, after the declaration of independence, not all residents received citizenship of the republic. Citizenship was granted if the person or one of his parents lived in Estonia before 1940 (that is, before Estonia joined the Soviet Union, which the authorities of the republic consider an “occupation”). The rest were given the opportunity to undergo the naturalization procedure by passing an exam on knowledge of the language and constitution.

After the collapse of the USSR, about half a million non-citizens ended up in Estonia. To date, their number has decreased significantly. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic recognized that the number of non-citizens is decreasing mainly due to the natural decline of this category of the population.

A union of non-citizens was created in Estonia