Marian Männi: Our own Titanic

Photo: Peeter Langovits / Scanpix

Estonians, Finns and Swedes cannot dive close to the wreck of Estonia ship that sank 20 years ago. Everyone else can, even if it's not ethical.

These three nations decided for a graveyard peace soon after the ferry went down.

Six years later, a German journalist Jutta Rabe gathered a team of divers – along with a 72-year-old American businessman Gregg Bemis –, to go see the sunken ship.

Without entering the ship they only circled outside to check for the traces of explosion or radiation.

After hearing about that the Swedish government forbade Ms Rabe - who wrote a book on Estonia where she suspected that the governments attempt to sweep the truth under a carpet - to return to the ship and threatened to sue her should she ever return to the site.

Official investigators aside, Rabe's team is the only one - we can be certain - that has been near the vessel since it drowned.

They were polite, they never entered the ship and they were only looking for the truth. But how many are there out there of whom we know nothing?

The day a Malaysian airplane was taken down in Eastern Ukraine, we saw shocking images of separatist going through the victims' belonging.

Most memorable, perhaps, was the one with a guy in a uniform. He had a cigarette and a gun in one hand and he was clutching a kid’s toy monkey in another.

This was such a sacrilege that Dutch ministers declared: hundreds of Dutch soldiers – unarmed, though – are to be sent to guard the site!

That never happened, but it is one example of how a government can react if one nation's tragedy is only as horrible as having to get up early for another.

Last week Vello Mäss, underwater archaeologist at Estonian Maritime Museum, said that the wreck couldn't be approached, because it's on Finnish coast guards's radars.

Finnish guards would check it out if any movements were spotted.

During the same conversation, Mr Mäss also said there’s still treasure left inside the sunken Estonia. Wow. That’s great news! From now on, we can just all leave our wallets lying around. Everyone knows you shouldn't steal. A waitress will spot the movements.

Diving instructor Tago Moldau told me that he knows people who have been at the wreck. He asked me not to mention which countries they were from, but lets say, from the neighbouring.

In Estonia, there are around 15–20 people who could dive as deep as 70 meters, enter the ship and haul something up.

Can you imagine how many of them could be in other countries?

We don't even need Mr Moldau to tell us that people go to explore the wreck.

Just type «Estonia sinking» into YouTube.

You will see the ship that bears our country’s name living another life, while we keep lighting our candles and remembering the dead and forgetting there are a lot of other nations in the world besides Estonians, Finns, and Swedes.

For them, Estonia is a European version of Titanic.

You know that movie everyone loves to go and see.