Survey Reveales General Approval to Free Speech Restrictions

According to a survey published on  freedom of speech published by Postimees, 44% of the respondents think that in the name of national security,it is totally justified to constrain free speech in this situation of crisis.

The remaining 41% showed a clear disapproval toward any limitation to freedom of expression while 15% do not know what to answer.

According to Vaike Vainu, sociologist from Turu-Uuringute AS, restriction is mostly approved by older people and Estonians while mostly non- Estonians and young people are against the idea of limiting freedom of speech.

Moving onto more concrete issues, it is somehow significant to discover that 53% of the people who answered the inquiry think that the biggest daily newspapers do not treat all the political parties equally.

The majority of the informants thought that it is absolutely normal that people attend demonstrations, meetings and pickets to defend their rights and – good news – 73% of the total respondents think it is possible for everyone to express their political opinion in Estonia today.

On the other hand, only 30% would dare to criticize some authority’s decisions during a demonstration and 23% would definately not do so.

Iivi Proos, sociologist and economic expert, commented on this survey and found that the results are very interesting but the survey is too small to come to any really important conclusions.

“These topics should be examined more” she said, and thinks that people understand for example the word “courage” quite differently.

Turu-uuringute AS carried out the telephone survery from 9th to 12th of February this year and the target group were people older than 15 who live in Tallinn. 500 people were questioned.