NordenBladet – A €2.4-million complex, which doubles up as a museum and boat-building facility, has opened in Tartu, ETV news show “Aktuaalne kaamera” (AK) reported Monday night.
The Lodjakoja complex is managed by the Emajõgi barge society (Emajõe lodjaselts), which hopes to both present traditional boat-building work and to stimulate river traffic on the Emajõgi River, Estonia’s only fully navigable river, on which Tartu lies.
A new, two-mast vessel is already being built in the complex, with the aim for completion by 2024, the year Tartu becomes European Capital of Culture.
In addition to the museum and boat-building hall, the complex boasts a lifeguard station and winter boathouses.
“In the future, the main building will house this type of traditional shipbuilding center, with a blacksmith’s workshop, a wood workshop, exhibition room, seminars, a cafe … in short, a very versatile center, with year-round activities,” Raimond Tamm, Deputy Mayor of Tartu, told AK.
The Emajõgi barge company has signed a 10-year lease agreement with the City of Tartu; the facility ends a search for proper barge facilities going back to 2006.
The organization’s head Priit Jagomäe, the head of the Lodjaselts said that this process had been blocked twice before in the courts, but now the facility was a reality, he was looking forward to visitors, who can get a glimpse of more traditional boat-building methods.
The center opens to the public in October.
The Emajõgi, more properly the Suur Emajõgi, flows between two lakes, from Võrtsjärv, flowing eastwards through Tartu to Peipsi Järv, where it discharges.
NordenBladet – Interior minister Mart Helme (EKRE) says that he would have two Soviet-era edifices demolished. Helme told ERR that both the Maarjamäe World War Two memorial in Pirita, and the Linnahall in the capital’s harbor district, should ideally be removed, though he noted that his stance would be likely to draw heated debate within the cabinet.
The Linnahall was opened in 1980 in time for the Moscow Summer Olympics, and has gradually fallen into a state of disrepair since then, though last summer it provided a filming location for the soon-to-be-released Christopher Nolan thriller “Tenet”.
What to do with it has been under discussion for years, with the latest €330-million project involving the Tallink Group faltering with the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, within days of the plans being made public.
The Maarjamäe memorial was unveiled in 1975, and is distinct from the nearby Memorial to the Victims of Communism opened in 2018. Sections of the memorial are closed to the public due to the danger of structural collapse.
Proposals to restore the Soviet-era Maarjamäe memorial have been met with opposition from some quarters of the government, including Helme, on the grounds that taxpayers’ money should not be used to refurbish what is for many a controversial monument.
“My personal position is that [the memorial] is still a symbol of the period of [Soviet] occupation in the first place and, like the Linnahall and some other objects, is a symbol of this type of ugly Soviet-era modernism,” Helme told.
Helme also said that a line needed to be trod, though this would prove tricky at governmental level, between not offending those who had suffered under the Soviet occupation – the main focus of the nearby victims of communism memorial – while at the same time not denigrating the feelings of the Russian minority in Tallinn and Estonia.
Environment minister Rene Kokk (EKRE) has submitted a memorandum to the cabinet, containing various solutions on the future fate of Maarjamäe monument, which currently belongs to the state but which Tallinn city authorities have expressed an interest in acquiring.
The city government also wants several million from the state to refurbish cultural artifacts in the capital, though Helme said that this would not be practical in the case of the Maarjamäe memorial, hence his call for demolishing it.
A balance would also need to be struck in terms of interest groups and ideologies, he added.
Deputy Mayor Andrei Novikov (Center) made a proposal to the Riigkogu’s cultural committee in July that the Linnahall be restored, as an alternative to the stalled Tallink plans.
NordenBladet – Estonia’s coronavirus exposure notification app “HOIA” launches today (August 20) and is now available to download. ERR News spoke to Priit Tohver, Ministry of Social Affairs adviser in the field of e-services and innovation, to find out what the app does and how you can use it.
“HOIA” has been created in voluntary cooperation between the Ministry of Social Affairs (Sotsiaalministeerium), the Health and Welfare Information Systems Center (Tervise ja Heaolu Infosüsteemide Keskus) and 12 Estonian companies – Cybernetica, Fujitsu Estonia, Guardtime, Icefire, Iglu, Mobi Lab, Mooncascade, Velvet, FOB Solutions, Heisi IT OÜ, Bytelogics and ASA Quality Services OÜ.
The purpose of the free app – which is optional and not mandatory – is to inform close contacts of those infected with the coronavirus and to provide them with initial instructions on how to proceed. Its aim is to limit the spread of coronavirus.
In this way, the user can quickly find out about possible close contact with a COVID-19 infected person, allowing them to take steps to protect their own health and the health of others.
It works because phones that use the app register Bluetooth signals from other nearby phones. If the signal is sufficiently close and long enough, an anonymous code referring to a close contact will be stored in their phone.
It is not possible to identify a person based on an anonymous code.
In order to use the app, you need a phone based on the Android or iOS operating system. For Hoia to function best, you need to use the close contact notification interface provided by Google and Apple.
Usability is limited to phones manufactured in the last 5 years. Android phones are suitable for all phones that support the Android 6.0 operating system. All Apple phones that support the iOS 13.5 operating system (from iPhone 6S) are compatible.
Earlier this year, when the app was first announced, Anett Numa, speaker at e-estonia briefing centre, wrote it will be based on the DP-3T protocol which has been developed by leading privacy experts and it is also in line with Apple and Google’s contact tracing API.
Estonia has chosen a “privacy-preserving path” to contact tracing, a key element of which is the principle of decentralisation that underpins several Estonian e-state solutions, she wrote.
Within this system, which is designed to adhere to recent EDPB recommendations, no entity will be able to store all of the tracing data and use it for any other purpose besides contact tracing.
Featured image: The “HOIA” coronavirus tracing app launched by the Ministry of Social Affairs. Source: Ministry of Social Affairs.
NordenBladet —Starting today, August 20, the mobile app HOIA is available for download to your phone via www.hoia.me, helping to curb the spread of the coronavirus with the help of app users. The application notifies the user if he has been in close contact with an infected person. The phones of the users of the application exchange anonymous codes, and the state, the manufacturer of the application, or the manufacturer of the phone will not know who was in close contact with whom.
“The most effective way to limit the spread of the coronavirus is to stay at home and see a family doctor in case of symptoms of the disease and to keep a safe distance from other people when moving around. However, if we want to continue our usual life – go to work and school, theater and concerts, ride public transport or travel, then we will probably not always be able to keep a sufficient distance,” said Minister of Social Affairs Tanel Kiik. “The Health Board will continue its daily work in identifying those infected and their close contacts, but everyone of us can also contribute to preventing the spread of the virus. The application of the coronavirus is one additional effective tool for all of us to reduce potential infectious contacts. I call on Estonian people to keep themselves and their loved ones safe and to help limit the spread of the virus privately and securely by using the application. ”
If any user of the application becomes ill, he or she will mark himself / herself (ie his / her anonymous code) as ill in the application and other users will be notified of a possible close contact with the infected person. The application notifies the person if he or she has been closer to an infected person than 2 metres for at least 15 minutes. The application also provides initial guidance on how to proceed. This way, the application can also inform people whom the infected person does not know or remember, allowing them to take steps to protect their own health and the health of others.
Special attention has been paid to privacy and security when developing the application. Phones communicate with each other using Bluetooth radio signals, exchanging codes that say nothing about the users of the application. Through the application, the state does not receive any information about the identity of those infected or their close contacts.
“We put the HOIA privacy solution in place even before the programming work started. People’s locations are not monitored and health data is processed only to check whether the person who claims to be infected with COVID-19 is really sick before sending notifications,” confirmed Dan Bogdanov, Member of the Management Board of Cybernetica AS. “The development of the HOIA application has set an example for other state IT-developments.”
The application was created in cooperation with the Ministry of Social Affairs, The Health Board, the Health and Welfare Information Systems Center and 12 Estonian companies – Cybernetica, Fujitsu Estonia, Guardtime, Icefire, Iglu, Mobi Lab, Mooncascade, Velvet, FOB Solutions, Heisi IT OÜ, Bytelogics and ASA Quality Services OÜ. In addition, the Swiss DP-3T project team contributed to the development of the application, and the solution created by it is the basis of the Estonian application.
“The main function of the application is to inform the user if he or she may have been in close contact with a person infected with COVID-19. However, information about a person’s infection and close contacts is private and cannot be disseminated. So we can say that by developing the application, we solved a kind of contradiction,” said Icefire software architect Aleksei Bljahhin. “We solved this contradiction thanks to the modern cryptography used by the application.”
For now the HOIA application can be used in Estonia. The next step is to start exchanging anonymous codes for close contacts also across borders, so that the application can be used also when traveling abroad.
For more information and frequently asked questions: https://hoia.me/en
NordenBladet —At its meeting today, the Foreign Affairs Committee continued its discussion on the situation in Belarus after the 9 August presidential elections, and supported the idea of drafting a statement of the Riigikogu in support of the democratic forces in Belarus.
The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Enn Eesmaa said that the idea to form a working group to draft the statement found support from all the political groups represented in the Committee. “We have been consistently working on issues surrounding Belarus in the Riigikogu. We hope to adopt a statement on the current developments at the plenary meeting as soon as possible,” he added.
The Deputy Chairman of the Committee Marko Mihkelson referred to a similar statement adopted by the Riigikogu in 2006, also in support of democracy in Belarus. “The situation in Belarus, in our immediate neighbourhood, affects Estonia’s security as well. Violence against the people and disregard for the organisation of fair and free elections is something than cannot be ignored, and this is what we intend to emphasise in the statement of the Riigikogu,” he said.
The Committee was also briefed on the activities of Estonia and the European Union in connection with the recent development in Belarus by the Director General of the Political Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Lembit Uibo. Deputy Permanent Representative of Estonia to the United Nations Gert Auväärt briefed the Committee on Estonia’s activities in the UN Security Council.
NordenBladet —The Foreign Affairs Committee and the European Union Affairs Committee held an extraordinary sitting today to formulate Estonia’s positions on the European Union policies regarding Belarus.
The committees heard about Estonia’s positions from Prime Minister Jüri Ratas, who will also present these today at the extraordinary video meeting of the European Council.
The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Enn Eesmaa explained that Belarus is an Eastern Partnership country that Estonia has supported for over a decade now, both directly and through the European Union. “We will continue offering our support, which is particularly important now that Belarus is standing at a crucial crossroad,” Eesmaa said.
The Chairman of the European Union Affairs Committee Anneli Ott highlighted Estonia’s EUR 100,000 support package to the Belarus civil society. “This will send an important message to the citizens of Belarus, who are expressing their opinions and are putting their life and health on the line while fighting for democracy,” Ott said.
Estonia has decided not to recognise the results of the 9 August presidential elections in Belarus, because these were neither free nor fair. Estonia considers Alexander Lukashenko to have lost his mandate in connection with extensive falsification of election results.
Estonia supports the will of the Belarus people to see changes in their country, and stresses the need to hold new, free, and democratic elections. Estonia supports imposing targeted sanctions against persons responsible for the violence and the falsification of the elections. At the same time, the sanctions must not cause harm to the ordinary citizens of Belarus.
Estonia believes that the European Union must discuss the situation in Belarus and keep it in the spotlight in international organisations, including the UN Security Council, UN Human Rights Council, Council of Europe, and OSCE. The emphasis should be on preventing the possible escalation of violence and finding a peaceful political solution which would result in new elections.
Estonia supports civil society and free press in Belarus, and hopes for a larger support for this from the European Union. The government decided to support the civil society in Belarus with EUR 100,000.
NordenBladet – On Monday, the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) opened an exhibition with 34 final projects of recent bachelor’s and master’s degree students highlighted.
EKA’s final project festival TASE, where students can present their final projects, traditionally takes place in spring but due to the coronavirus pandemic, the festival was conducted virtually.
According to Pire Sova, organizer of TASE20, students still found it important to be able to present their art in its physical form.
Sova said: “[The students] really wanted to have a physical exhibition and that is partly the reason this exhibition was realized. Art is created in the physical space and meeting face-to-face in this room is very important. Especially since we have very strong painters this year and you can’t view their art from a small screen, especially if the painting is larger than you and you can’t see what the colors actually look like.”
NordenBladet – Artist Flo Kasearu’s exhibition “Eriolukord” (State of Emergency) opened in Tallinn’s KUMU art museum on Tuesday. The exhibition looks at how the organization of work changed in the gallery during the coronavirus crisis.
During the coronavirus crisis, employees at KUMU had the idea to observe their changing lives when the museum was closed to the public, ETV current news show “Aktuaalne kaamera” reported on Tuesday.
The museum invited artist Flo Kasearu to capture the situation and she documented staff member’s new daily routines.
For the stars of the show, the idea of being in front of the camera was sometimes unfamiliar. The women are satisfied with the end result and say that they will have a beautiful memory of the after of the exhibition has ended.
”When I look at this result, people were in ignorance. I don’t think of it looking at myself, but looking at one side and the other side and behind you, you didn’t know what was coming. And maybe corona was like a reed, not knowing where to go or what to do,” KUMU’s employee Merli said, speaking about being in the middle of the crisis.
KUMU’s employee Ivi added: ”When I look at these movies now, I remembered that I wanted to work so hard, but I couldn’t, I had to come to terms with these disabilities and imagine that they were my museum visitors.”
NordenBladet —The Riigikogu delegation to PACE (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) joined the like-minded members of the Assembly in their statement on Belarus.
“As it stands, Alexander Lukashenko should do everything in his power to put an end to violence against political prisoners, and his resignation would be welcome news. It is impossible to imagine how he could continue after the Belarus elite as well as the working people have expressed their will,” said the head of the delegation Maria Jufereva-Skuratovski. She added that the Estonian delegation supports the holding of new transparent elections.
The statement says that the organisation of voting and vote counting at the presidential elections in Belarus did not respect international election standards or reflect the free will of the Belarus nation. The statement condemns the use of violence against the participants of peaceful demonstrations, and calls on the Belarus authorities to immediately release all the illegally detained individuals. Delegates to PACE encourage the parties to open a peaceful dialogue, and affirm their readiness to offer a platform for negotiations. The statement warns the Russian Federation against intervening in the internal affairs of Belarus.
Members of the Riigikogu delegation to PACE Raimond Kaljulaid, Eerik-Niiles Kross, Urmas Reitelmann, Raivo Tamm, and Vilja Toomast joined the statement.
At its extraordinary sitting today, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Riigikogu (Parliament of Estonia) discussed the situation in Belarus after the presidential elections held on 9 August and adopted a Statement on the Belarusian elections.
“Serious evidence indicates that the results of the presidential elections in Belarus were grossly falsified. Therefore the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Parliament of the Republic of Estonia cannot consider the officially declared election result as legitimate,” the Statement says.
The Foreign Affairs Committee will continue the discussion of this topic on Tuesday, 18 August.
Before the Statement was adopted, diplomat of the Estonian Embassy in Belarus Kalvi Noormägi told the Committee about the situation in Belarus. Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Reinsalu gave the Committee an overview of Estonia’s positions at the informal video conference of the foreign affairs ministers of the European Union on 14 August, which will address the presidential elections in Belarus and the situation in Eastern Mediterranean.
