RFE/RL NEWSLINE on minority issues in CEE
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Subject: RFE/RL NEWSLINE on minority issues in CEE
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE on minority issues in CEE
RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 5, No. 96, Part II, 21 May 2001
CRIMEAN TATARS MOURN 1944 DEPORTATION, DEMAND LAND.
Some 15,000 Tatars gathered in Simferopol on 18 May for a mass prayer
to mark the 57th anniversary of the mass deportation of Crimean Tatars
by Joseph Stalin, Reuters reported. They called on the Ukrainian
government to grant land rights to Tatar families in Crimea as well as
improve welfare and support for returnees. "The land issue is the most
painful issue for us. Ukraine's existing laws cannot solve the
problems of the Crimean Tatar people and do not take into account that
the indigenous people are returning to Crimea from where they were
deported," Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev told the agency. JM
MOSCOW PROTESTS ATTACK ON RUSSIAN CENTER IN LVIV.
The Russian Foreign Ministry on 18 May protested an attack on the
Russian cultural center in Lviv, calling on Ukraine to take steps to
avoid further incidents, Interfax reported. Moscow said it "expects an
appropriate reaction by the Ukrainian authorities to the action of
western Ukrainian radical right-wingers." The previous day unknown
attackers set fire to a side door of the center, smashed a window, and
painted an inscription reading "The Revenge of Galicians." ITAR-TASS
reported that the arson attack was staged by the "Galician Wolves," a
nationalist organization hitherto unknown to the police. Meanwhile,
Andriy Bolkun from the Lviv Oblast Administration said the attackers
wanted to thwart the visit of Pope John Paul II to Ukraine, the
"Eastern Economist Daily" reported. JM
CZECH GERMAN MINORITY DEMANDS ABOLITION OF BENES DECREES.
Christa Strosova, deputy chairwoman of the Association of
Germans in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, on 19 May demanded
that the Czech Republic officially abolish the 1946 Benes
decrees. She told a forum of Sudeten Germans in Vienna that
Prague must pay compensation for confiscated property and
return assets nationalized from members of the German
minority who managed to stay in postwar Czechoslovakia.
Strosova said members of the German minority "to this day
feel the consequences of the decrees." She said that in the
1950s wages paid to Germans were one-fifth of those paid to
Czechs, Germans were discriminated against in education, and
for a long time they were not allowed to pursue higher
education, CTK reported. MS
CZECH JEWISH COMMUNITY WORRIED ABOUT GROWING NEO-NAZISM. The
Czech Federation of Jewish Communities, in a statement
released on 20 May, said it is "disappointed" that "Neo-Nazi
activities are tolerated in a country where some 80,000 of
our kin were killed by the Nazi regime," CTK reported. The
statement said the federation had hoped that the parliament,
the governments, and the courts of justice would realize by
themselves that toleration of Nazism is "inadmissible."
However, "we are witnessing the opposite situation" and such
toleration has grown in the course of the last 10 years.
Tomas Jelinek, chairman of the Prague Jewish Community, said
the statement marked the start of a campaign, and that eight
senators have already expressed support for the federation's
initiative to hold public hearings on the danger of neo-
Nazism, racism, and xenophobia. The Senate will also debate
this danger in June, Jelinek said. MS
SLOVAK ROMANY PARLIAMENT LAUNCHES APPEAL ON CENSUS. The
Slovak Romany Parliament, which was established in March, on
20 May called on members of the Roma minority to declare
their nationality at the 26 May national census, CTK
reported. The organization's chairman, Ladislav Fizik, told
journalists that the state financing of Roma minority bodies
depends on the number of Roma who identify themselves as such
at the census and added that massive registration may help
Roma cope with unemployment problems. Fizik said some 160,000
Roma, representing 87 percent of all Roma of working age, are
unemployed. He said that at the 1991 national census only
82,000 declared their nationality as Roma, but the actual
number was "several times higher." "We hope that at least
300,000 will register as Roma," he said. According to Fizik,
one of the problems is that some 200,000 Roma in southern
Slovakia are likely to register as Hungarians. MS
HUNGARIAN PRIME MINISTER CAUTIOUS ON DUAL CITIZENSHIP. Viktor
Orban told Hungarian Radio on 20 May that while the Hungarian
government has no objections to granting dual citizenship to
ethnic Hungarians abroad, such a move would not facilitate
the travel of ethnic Hungarians to EU countries, even after
Hungary itself is admitted to EU. Orban also recalled that
neighboring countries assess dual citizenship in different
ways, noting that Ukrainian laws ban dual citizenship while
in Romania certain rights are withheld from those who hold
dual citizenship. In other news, Hungarian Foreign Ministry
State Secretary Zsolt Nemeth said in the Romanian city of
Oradea on 19 May that Hungary is "repaying an 80-year-old
debt" by passing the "Status Law." He said it is a general
reality of Central Europe that the borders of a nation do not
necessarily coincide with that of a state, Hungarian media
reported. MSZ
OSCE TO TRAIN ETHNIC ALBANIAN POLICEMEN IN MACEDONIA? After
the international community criticized the small number of
ethnic Albanians and members of other minorities within the
Macedonian army and police, the Macedonian Interior Ministry
has reportedly agreed to cooperate with the OSCE, the EU, and
the U.S. in training members of national minorities in
Macedonia for police service. Citing anonymous sources in the
ministry, the Skopje daily "Vest" reported on 19 May that
both the U.S. and the EU are likely to fund the training
activities under the auspices of the OSCE in a program that
will be modeled after the UNMIK police force training in
Kosova. UB
HUNGARIAN EDUCATION MINISTER EXPLAINS STATUS BILL IN ROMANIA.
Hungarian Education Minister Zoltan Pokorni on 19 May said in
Oradea that the "Status Bill" currently under debate in his
country's parliament can be viewed as "a special form of
help" extended by Budapest to neighboring countries for their
integration in the EU. "We want to help Hungarians living in
those countries preserve their specific culture, and what is
good for Slovak or Romanian Magyars is also good for the
countries they live in," Pokorni said. He spoke at a ceremony
marking the inauguration of dormitories of the private
Hungarian-language Partium University. Hungarian Foreign
Ministry State Secretary Zsolt Nemeth and Prime Minister
Viktor Orban's wife also attended the ceremony, Mediafax
reported. MS
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 5, No. 98, Part II, 23 May 2001
CROATIAN GOVERNMENT SENDS ISTRIAN LANGUAGE LAW TO CONSTITUTIONAL
COURT. The Croatian government has asked the Constitutional Court to
examine the Istrian county assembly's attempt to make Italian the
county's second official language, Reuters reported on 22 May. The
Justice Ministry had already suspended the decision (see "RFE/RL
Newsline," 24 April 2001), and the decision was criticized by the
ruling coalition as a unilateral politically motivated act that could
raise ethnic tensions elsewhere in the country. Istria was part of
Italy from 1918 to 1945, when many ethnic Italian residents of Istria
and Dalmatia left or were expelled after World War II. DW
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