Merry Christmas!

Reply-To: [email protected]
Sender: [email protected]
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 1999 09:56:58 +0200 (EET)
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
Subject: Merry Christmas!

From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>

Merry Christmas!


Dear MINELRES list members, 

The Christmas is coming, and as usually we announce break in MINELRES
functioning. 

The year which is about to go has been marked with significant
developments in the field of minority rights. The tragedy of Kosovo
should be mentioned first, of course. These scary events clearly show
what consequences neglect of minority rights may entail, and also
how difficult it is to find proper ways to intervene and to fix the
situation. Unfortunately, it would be premature to speak about the
Kosovo crisis as about the past - in fact, it remains a litmus test
for the world community. Are we mature enough to handle such a
difficult issue properly, or next time something used to be called
geopolitical considerations will prevail over human rights and
minority rights approach? The answer is still to be learned in the
next years. 

In this year, for the first time in history, state parties of the
Framework Convention had to report officially about the situation of
minorities in their countries. These state reports are no doubt of
great importance to everybody interested in minority rights, this is
why we - thanks to the staff of the Minority Unit of the Council of
Europe - made the reports available online. Still before the end of
December, you can access these reports at
http://www.riga.lv/minelres/coe/statereports.htm (to be completely
honest, I ought to add that some appendices to the reports will be
added in January 2000). Let me remind that alternative reports
prepared by NGOs - which definitely add very much to official ones -
are available at the CEDIME website at
http://www.greekhelsinki.gr/english/reports/FCNM-reports-on-compliance.html.
We plan to develop closer cooperation with CEDIME, as well as other
websites and mailing lists devoted to minority rights, in order to
make our services more convenient for users. 

As to the MINELRES mailing list, it continues functioning thanks to
generosity of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. We would like
to make use of an opportunity to express our gratitude to this donor,
as well as to Mr. Ole Espersen, the Council of the Baltic Sea States
Commissioner on Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, including
the Rights of Persons belonging to Minorities, who also supported the
MINELRES project. We are also grateful to all list members for their
valuable advice on fundraising opportunities. 

Within this year, we received some well-deserved criticism for
sometimes posting overtly nationalistic, not sufficiently balanced
submissions, and even not always supplied them with the moderator's
comments. The reason for this was very simple: we do trust our
readers. We believe that everybody interested in the field should have
access to all available and relevant information. Narrow-minded
nationalism does exist in reality - thus, we have to reflect this in
our list, too. We believe that list members are able to evaluate
submissions properly themselves, and are not in a position to become a
judge or a tutor who imposes his own view. However, we will never
circulate explicit hate speech, of course. 

Why the problems related to minorities in Europe are becoming
increasingly central on political and humanitarian agenda? We believe
it is not only because of security reasons. Apparently, globalization
and growing inter-dependence is one of the main reason behind this. In
the modern global world, all nations are becoming minorities in some
sense, and thus problems and difficulties traditionally reserved for
minority groups, are becoming urgent for almost everybody. This is why
on the eve of Christmas we wish you peace, equality and dignity -
regardless of whether you belong to minority or to majority (to the
extent it is possible still to belong to majority in the modern world
:-). 

We are looking forward to meeting again in the cyberspace very soon -
in the next millennium!

Yours, 

Boris & Boris

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