Estonia: 20-year-old who wiped his shoes on the national flag gets suspended sentence

The Viru County Court in eastern Estonia has found a 20-year-old man, a citizen of Ukraine, guilty of desecrating an official symbol of the Republic of Estonia. He was handed a two-month prison sentence, suspended with a one-year probation period. The ruling has not yet entered into force.

What happened

The incident took place on 12 October at about 11:18 in the assembly hall of the Narva Adult School on Kalda Street. According to the case materials, the young man took the Estonian national flag off its stand and wiped his sports shoes with it. Police who arrived after a call detained him at the scene, and criminal proceedings were opened under Section 245(1) of the Estonian Penal Code.

The court's decision

On 14 October the case went before the court in a settlement procedure. The two days the defendant spent in custody during the preliminary investigation, from 12 to 13 October, were counted toward the sentence. He will not have to serve the remaining one month and 28 days if he commits no new intentional crime during the one-year probation. The court also ordered him to pay the state 709.50 euros in procedural costs and gave him one year to do so.

Comment from the school

Stanislav Nemerzhitsky, director of the Narva Adult School, told Rus.ERR that the incident was extremely unpleasant and that state symbols should not become an object for expressing any kind of dissatisfaction. As a teacher and a school head, he said, it is hard for him to understand why the man did it.

He said the school will have to carry out additional explanatory work with students about their attitude toward the country they live in and about acceptable ways of expressing disagreement. If there are complaints about the school or particular teachers, he stressed, the national flag has nothing to do with them.