News from Eurolang: Minority languages in EU states and applicant countries
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Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 12:02:41 +0300 (EEST)
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Subject: News from Eurolang: Minority languages in EU states and applicant countries
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: John Walsh <[email protected]>
News from Eurolang: Minority languages in EU states and
applicant countries
Russia signs European Minority Languages Charter
Brussels 11/5/01 (Eurolang)
Russia has signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority
Languages.
According to a press release from the Council of Europe, the First
Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexandre Avdeev, signed the Charter
yesterday (10/05).
A Council of Europe spokeswoman told Eurolang that about 100 languages
in Russia could be considered as falling within the scope of the
Charter.
It's thought that it could take Russia up to two years to prepare the
instrument of ratification necessary before the Charter can be
implemented, a Council of Europe source indicated.
The Council has already organised several seminars in Russia on the
theme of minority languages.
It was announced this morning that Armenia has also signed the Charter
for Minority Languages.
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Yugoslavia accedes to Convention on National Minorities
Brussels 11/5/01 (Eurolang)
Yugoslavia has acceded to the Framework Convention for the Protection
of National Minorities, a key piece of international law on
minorities.
The Council of Europe in Strasbourg announced today that the
Convention would enter into force in Yugoslavia on September 1.
Under the Convention, state undertake to combat discrimination against
minorities and to promote equality.
There are also provisions on allowing the use of minority languages in
private and public domains, especially in education and the media.
The Convention is already in force in 33 Council of Europe member
states and has been signed by a further eight.
--------
Austrian parliament votes for ratification of Minority Languages
Charter
Brussels 10/5/01 (Eurolang)
The Austrian parliament has voted unanimously in favour of the
ratification of the European Charter for Regionsal or Minority
Languages, Austrian state broadcaster ORF has reported.
Apart from general provisions, the Charter also contains a second
section in which each country can choose from 70 provisions on
protecting minority languages.
Opposition parties have criticised the Austrian government for opting
for what they call the 'minimum version', because they chose only 35
of the protective provisions.
The provisions guarantee protection and prohibit discrimination in the
case of the Slovene minority in Carinthia as well as Croatian and
Hungarian minorities in Burgenland.
The document also grants specific rights to the Viennese Czechs and
Slovaks as well as the Roma in Burgenland.
Requests by the opposition Socialists and the Green party to extend
protection for the Roma and to the Croatian minority in Vienna were
rejected.
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Roma minority question to have high profile in Slovak census
Bratislava 11/5/01 , by Balazs Jarabik (Eurolang)
The Roma minority question in Slovakia will have a high profile in the
run-up to this month's census, minority groups there have claimed.
'The census planned for May 26 will be the hottest minority issue in
Slovakia because it's expected that a higher number of ethnic Roma
citizens will register as Roma for the first time', Ingrid Baumanova,
Director of the Slovak branch of the International Helsinki Committee
for Human Rights said.
'Everybody in Slovakia is expecting to get a clearer picture of the
real number of Roma living in Slovakia', Baumanova told Eurolang.
According to the official 1991 census, there are 80,627 Slovak Roma.
The London-based Minority Rights Group, however, estimates the number
to be between 480,000 and 520,000, approximately 10% of the total
population. According to this estimate, the Roma constitute the second
largest minority in the Slovak Republic after the Hungarians.
Roma activists in Slovakia have already sent an open letter to
President Rudolf Schuster, Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda and to the
parliament, after the Slovak government failed to issue census forms
in both Slovak and Romany.
Following the protest, the Slovak government approved the proposal of
Deputy Prime Minister, P=E1l Cs=E1ky - himself an ethnic Hungarian -
to use bilingual Slovak/Romany forms in villages with over 20 percent
Roma. These figures are based on the 1991 census, however.
The proposal is in accordance with the 1999 law on the use of
languages of national minorities which enables public use of the
language of the minority when it composes at least 20 percent of the
municipal population, which is the case for Roma in about 57 villages.
However, several Roma leaders in Slovakia have warned that adequate
attention has not been paid to the issue of the census in Roma
settlements.
An additional problem is the number of the Roma officers conducting
the census. According to estimates by Roma organisations, only about
100 of 22,000 officials can speak Roma.
Istvan Schill of the Slovak Statistical Bureau told Eurolang that
local governments and not his office are reponsible for hiring census
officials. Due to this fact, Schill was confirm the number of Roma
officials. However, despite specific recruitment announcements, Roma
people had showed no interest in becoming census officials, Schill
claimed.
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Minority representatives in Austria demand improvements in Croatian
education and media
Brussels and Vienna 9/5/01, by Margret Oberhofer=20
Minority representatives in Austria have demanded a strengthened
bilingual Croatian/German school system and sufficient support for
media to guarantee the survival of the Croatian language, especially
in the province of Burgenland. The Croatian Centre in Vienna is
organising various events this week to mark the European Year of
Languages, but minority representatives are concerned about the future
development of the language in Austria.
'There was a stagnation regarding the value given to the Croatian
language in Burgenland, but it now seems to have been overcome.
Because of changes in recent years, Austrians have learned that
knowing another language is useful', says Terezija Stoisits, Green
party spokesperson for minority issues.
However this doesn't mean that the future of the language is not
threatened, Stoisits explains. Public awareness is important to ensure
to future survival of Croatian in Burgenland in its current form. On
one hand, the minority speaker needs to be self-confident in order to
pass their language on to their children. But it is also very
important to have guidance from public institutions.
'The support from the public is very small. Activities for minority
languages depend on the ethnic minorities themselves. There is no
automatic support from politicians', says Stoisits.
Strengthening the bilingual school system is also very important for
maintaining the minority language. 'The fact that there is only one
secondary school and one grammar school for minority speakers in
Burgenland causes many problems for students in the north and south of
the region. They can't take advantage of the facilities because the
journey there would take too long', explains Hubert Mikel, the
Director of the Austrian Centre for Minorities.
In his opinion, the school system for Croatians in Burgenland is in
general not at its best, but that there are some praiseworthy factors.
There are also possibilities to strengthen the school system, however
Mikel doesn't see any evidence that the government wants to do so.
Franjo Schruiff of the Burgenland-Croatian Centre in Vienna is very
unhappy with the state of schooling in Croatian, however. 'Officially
there are between 28 and 30 bilingual schools, but in reality the
situation is a catastrophe'. Schruiff is referring to the minority
school law from 1995 which sets the percentage of class time in
Croatian according to students' ability and parents' wishes. The
teacher's own linguistic ability is also a factor. 'The most important
step now would be an evaluation of bilingual classes in Burgenland. If
the results are negative, we would have to take further steps for a
change', Schruiff says.
Public awareness has also been identified as crucial. 'The population
must understand that we have to start now, if we want our students to
use their languages in 10 or 15 years in a larger European Union',
says Schruiff. Stoisits from the Green Party agrees: 'I hope that the
value of Croatian increases in an enlarged Europe and that you won't
have to justify yourself when you learn this language'.
No major improvements in media have been identified by minority
representatives either. 'It was a major innovation when the state's
public service broadcaster ORF integrated minorities into their
channels 20 years ago. Since than there has been a stagnation. And the
initiatives for private radio stations are more or less blocked
because of financial reasons', says Stoisits. The regional government
has promised to financially support minority media, but so far no
decisions have been made.
The minority representatives are also sceptical about the new ORF law
recently announced by the government. The legislation would, for the
first, also ensure that the six official minority languages are
mentioned in ORF policy documents. Concerns have been expressed,
however, the law would also allow ORF to broadcast minority programmes
on the private radio stations. 'This law is a double-edged sword for
us: on one hand it would mean that financing is secure and that
professionalism increases. On the other hand we fear that minority
radio stations would be abolished in the long term', says Kristian
Krall, studio controller at Antenne 4, a quadrilingual local radio
station in Burgenland.
The minority representatives have expressed support for the
initiatives of the European Year of Languages and hope that it will
also have positive effects on minority languages. They are not
satisfied, however, with the direct support from the Austrian
government, a reference to official policy on the European Charter for
Regional and Minority Languages, which will be discussed in a plenary
session at the parliament tomorrow. 'It is very important that
minority language speakers are also protected outside the language
area in Burgenland', says Mikel. The director of the Austrian Centre
for Minorities is referring to about one quarter of the
Croatian-speaking population in Austria which lives in Vienna.
Minority representatives have already expressed their displeasure that
none of their suggestions was taken on board when the Charter was
discussed in the parliament's Human Rights Committee last week.
------------
John Walsh
R=E9dacteur en chef/Editor-in-Chief
Eurolang
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T=E9l: ++ 32 2/218.25.90
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Email: [email protected]
Web: www.eurolang.net
Eurolang news agency in Brussels covers minority language questions in
EU states and applicant countries.
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