Your Majesties,
Excellencies,
The Swedish People and My Countrymen in Sweden!

On behalf of the Republic of Estonia, the Estonian Parliament and the Government of Estonia, but also on behalf of my fellow countrymen who have found a new home in Sweden, I express my deepest condolensces to all who have been affected by the "Estonia" catastrophe.

Compared to Sweden, Estonia is such a small nation and people that today's mourning is, for Estonians, a mourning within the family. Each and every one of us has lost someone close, or our friend has lost someone close.

Words are too feeble to describe the common sorrow of Swedes and Estonians. Joy has one face. But misfortune, sorrow and pain each has its own face every time. It touches the soul, the person and peoples in various ways.

Today we ask, perplexed, why this chalice has not passed us by, but has come to our table. We perceive this as being unfair, we are embittered and we risk falling into the trap set by injustice. Pain can cleanse, but also, unlike joy, can blind and give rise to evil.

For that reason, let us concentrate our thoughts today on the cleansing properties of ordeal. In loss, the temporal fate of the individual unites with the individual's timeless eternity. Trials, no matter how difficult, are a person's greatest sacrifice and at the same time are the only means through which the human attributes are deepened, those same attributes which cleanse us and give voice to sympathy, in this way bringing us all closer together.

As an Estonian I can avouch to you that we have not suffered a loss claiming so many victims since the March mass deportations in 1949. We have not suffered a loss at sea claiming so many lives since the great September wave of flight by boat in 1944. At that faraway time, my countrymen found generosity, assistance and mercy on the soil of Sweden. It opened your eyes to the suffering of a small people and opened your hearts to compassion.

Today's trial is also also a duel between hope and dispair, between good and evil, between the forces of light and dark. Evil is already ripe to exploit the hundreds of victims and the sorrow of millions to its own advantage.

Let us resist this temptation.

Bowing my head in sorrow before those who perished, before all those who are in mourning, I also bow my head before Captain Arvo Andresson, who piloted the ship. We do not yet know the fatal details of the accident. But I want to assure you that the ship departed from our midst with alarm lights ablaze, accompanied by three siren signals and with the captain on the bridge. He served the way Estonian captains have served for hundreds of years, and, up to the very last moment, was loyal to the laws of the sea.

Your Majesty, honourable mourners, I assure you that the Republic of Estonia will do all in its power to determine the whole truth behind this catastrophe. This is the only way we can render our common sea, which Estonians refer to as their second field, safe and secure. Safe for our children, safe for the sea-going, safe for the flags of all states on the shores of the Baltic Sea.

This is our first obligation to those who perished.

Every trial, no matter how painful, is a birth of new hope.

Until the tragedy that we commemorate today, the Swedish and Estonian people have been united in our common history, our common joys and hopes.

From now on, we will also be united in our common loss, the human lives that have stepped into eternity, the ties that bind forever.

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