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Amnesty International on Thursday urged Estonia to ease contentious language and citizenship laws that it said have alienated the Russian-speaking minority in the Baltic country.

The London-based human rights group said in a report that the Russian speakers, who make up nearly one-third of Estonia’s 1.3 million population, face discrimination and limited access to the labor market.

“Russian speakers are caught in a vicious circle — they do not have the language skills required by the government to get many jobs and cannot get these qualifications as they do not have the money to acquire them,” Amnesty spokesman David Diaz-Jogeix said.

The country’s only official language is Estonian, fluency of which is required by law in the public sector and many private companies. Non-Estonian speakers need to pass a language test to qualify for such jobs.

Estonian language skills are also a key requirement for citizenship, which has left at least 100,000 people with a stateless status, mostly Russian-speakers who arrived during five decades of Soviet occupation.

“Amnesty International respects Estonia’s right to preserve its culture, and it has a right to preserve and promote its language,” Amnesty researcher Anders Dahlbeck told reporters in Tallinn.

However, this should not take place “at the expense of internationally respected human rights,” he added.

Population Minister Paul-Eerik Rummo said Wednesday that parts of the report were based on outdated information and generalizations, but did not specify which ones.

The issue is a constant irritant with Moscow, which routinely accuses Estonia and neighboring Latvia of discriminating against their Russian-speaking communities. The Baltic countries regained independence in 1991 amid the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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