(let's wait for the answer):
Sokos Hotels
P.O. Box 1, 00088 S GROUP, Finland
Switch board: Tel. +358 10 76 8011
To Whom It May Concern:
I recently walked by the Viru Hotel in Reval, Tallinn, which was built by the Soviet Union in the 1972s (or about that time). There are enormous, staggering flagpoles on the side of the hotel displaying the flags of the Estonian ethnostate as well as Finland, Germany, Sweden, Norway and of the European Union.
As far as I know after Finnish tourists the largest group of people who stay at the Sokos Viru are Russian Federation nationals, however the flag of the Russian Federation is conspicuous by its absence.
Would you please explain why the largest group, after the Finnish passport holders, the greatest spenders by volume who collectively support your establishment financially is being discriminated against by your hotel chain? What would the reason be of such manifest and seemingly mindless, ungracious Russophobia?
Although I am not nominally a Russian passport holder I am informally studying the instances of corporate discrimination in the post-Soviet Baltic statelets, the purpose behind this effort is to single the most obvious and brazen offenders out - those who discriminate against Russian language, Russophone speakers, or even, inexplicably, the flag (discrimination here means that someone or something is treated differently from others even when demographics and history would warrant otherwise or in case of Estonia for instance only accepting the Estonian ethno-Nazi narrative as only one) and to punish them by organizing boycott in the Russian Federation itself or by leveling legal sanctions against by passing law on anti-discrimination in the former Russian Empire and the republics of the Soviet Union.
While I am not making any judgment yet, I believe that the number of Russian customers of Sokos Viru in Reval (today's Tallinn), a city where over one of inhabitants speaks Russian natively which has been a part of the Russian state or of the Soviet for close 300 years is probably somewhat greater than that of Norwegian - with all due respect to Norwegian visitors (I happen to like Norwegians a lot) and that begs the question why would the Norwegian - or the German flag - be displayed publicly, but not the flag of your Russian customers?
Sincerely yours,
PS: employees at Sokos Viru also refused to speak to me in Russian - that happened in the Mexican themed bar and another bar - it is obvious that hiring someone bilingual would make sense in a city where at least one third of inhabitants speak Russian natively and the second largest foreign group are Russian speaking tourists. Unfortunately the personnel does not speak German or French either.
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ReplyDeleteHi!
ReplyDeleteYou are writing a blog without really facts. It is unpolite not to have Russian flag at pole if there is Russian clients. You are not Russian but did you ask from hotel director how many Russian clients they did had at that moment? If you didn't ask the question directly from hotel why you write this kind of blog? Normally people should take contact to decision makers first and ask real facts and only after that write what they see are not correct.
Not a Russian flag at the pole - normally the flags are used depending client nationality at that day. Biggest gruop first. Did you ask the situation? Not! So you are asuming - not fact If there was Russian clients more than clients from Germany, Sweden and Norway then it was unpolite from hotel side, not discrimination. Was there any free poles?
You are assuming that all people in Estonia should serve you at Russian language because of the history and because they are so big tourist group. Wrong. It is not discrimination. It is unpolite and a little bit stupid because client easily goes to another bar, hotel etc where he/she can speak Russian. You wrote about the Amarillo and another bar. Do you know that Amarillo and the Viru hotel are different companies? I suppose you didn't know. I suppose you didn't even ask. Probably you even didn't look the information from the bill, you see it there.
You know that Finns are the biggest client group at Viru Hotel but do you know that all the workers do not speak Finnish? It is not discrimination. Discrimination is for example if the hotel do not book you a room because of your nationality although there is free rooms.
Do you really understand the real meaning of discrimination?
I do really know how the situation in Estonia is between Estonians and Russians. I am a Finn and I have personal knowledge of Estonia since 1977 and having Russian girlfriend last 12 years in Tallinn.
If you really want to study discrimination in objective way then you should also study Estonian post-war history and compare acts at that time and nowdays.
If we talk about discrimination, then I am not at the Estonian side neither Russian side. I do not like discrimination neither direction but more I hate wrong one side disinformation and opinions without real facts which purpose is to change peoples thoughts to one side without the facts.
"Do you really understand the real meaning of discrimination?", Hi, thank you for your comments, I did not check the blog for months, will get back to it as I was busy with other things. Yes, I had contacted the management of the chain and in fact there is now the Russian flag at the pole in front of the establishment. Discrimination pertains to different treatment. You can have something that is even called positive discrimination or, just wait, one can a discriminating taste. Discrimination is when people are treated differently while they pay the same amount for the service or identical product or are paid differently for the same work they perform. As one (Finnish) journalist told me that ethnic Russians or those are perceived to be Russian expect to get paid less than their Estonian colleagues in the same company (this is a supermarket chain), and although almost any form of discrimination is outlawed under EU conventions such as the European Convention on Human Rights, discrimination in a multitude of forms goes on as a policy in the apartheid ethno-Nazi statelet of Estonia as well as. though on much smaller scale, in its southern neighbor, the ethno-satrapy of Latvia. From what I know there is very little of employment and, in my personal experience, under normal every day circumstances linguistic discrimination in Lithuania is rare.
DeleteThanks again
Roobit