Estonia: Artist Seeks Transparency on Rules on Partial Nudity

[Danee]

A woman recently arrested for walking topless in a town in northern
 Estonia has contacted the Gender Equality and Equal Treatment
 Commissioner to draw attention to what she says is a grey area.
 
Artist Fideelia-Signe Roots wrote this week to the official, Mari-Liis
 Sepper, telling uudised.err.ee that she wants to bring about real as
 opposed to theoretical gender equality.

 

"I want it written specifically in the rules governing public order
 whether being topless is or is not an infraction and whether it only
 applies to women or men as well," said Roots.
 
Roots said if such a statute only applied to women, it would be
 against the Gender Equality Act.
 
"As it is, I'm confused: my behavior was considered a breach of public
 order, but the law that I violated is non-existent," she said. "My
 question, why was the police called and why did they act as if I were
 a criminal?"
 
Roots's stunt was part of an action she designed namely to draw
 attention to this grey area at the time of her arrest.
 
It worked. As it happened, she was more than halfway into a 150-odd-
 kilometer walk from Tartu to Karepa when the incident - or non-
 incident, as Roots would have it - on August 10 was phoned in to the
 police by good citizen Indrek Kesküla, elder of Väike-Maarja
 municipality, among others.
 
The police decided not to press the case, but documented the incident
 as a breach of order.
 
Roots considered unraveling the legal threads of that seeming
 contradiction, but after consulting a lawyer, decided to take the case
 to Sepper. She is seeking an official position from Sepper, which is
 expected to take at least several weeks


From: http://news.err.ee/culture/c16bfccf-b613-4d00-9ec0-05ce41605da9


She is an accomplished artist and her Vimeo video page is here [url=http://vimeo.com/fideelia.]http://vimeo.com/fideelia.[/url]  Her video of the walk, can be found [url=http://vimeo.com/27963770]here. [/url]