MINELRES: Fwd: RFE/RL: Bashkortostan: Language Issues
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Sat Jan 24 14:13:50 2004
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Bashkortostan's Tatars Insist On Official Status For Tatar Language
In an interview with RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service on 9 January, a
senior member of the Bashkortostan Tatar Congress and a Tatarstan trade
representative said that Tatar civic groups in Bashkortostan continue to
believe that state-language status should be extended to Tatar. Ramil
Bignov said there are 1.5 million ethnic Tatars in Bashkortostan, which
is higher than the number of ethnic Bashkirs in the republic. Bignov was
responding to a statement by the chairman of the Bashkir Congress's
executive committee, Ekhmet Soleimanov, in which Soleimanov said that
granting state-language status to Tatar would prompt demands for similar
recognition from the Chavash, Maris, and other peoples in Bashkortostan
(see "RFE/RL Tatar-Bashkir Report," 9 January 2003). Soleimanov conceded
that several languages could be afforded official status. Bignov noted
that there are seven languages with official status in Daghestan.
President Murtaza Rakhimov recently spoke favorably of revising the
Tatar language's status in Bashkortostan (see "RFE/RL Tatar-Bashkir
Report," 12 December 2003).
BTK Appeals To Rakhimov About Tatar-Language Status
The Executive Committee of the Bashkir Tatar Congress (BTK) discussed at
a 13 January meeting the status of the Tatar language in Bashkortostan,
an RFE/RL Ufa correspondent reported the next day. The committee
appealed to the State Assembly to stop considering amendments to the
republican law on languages until the issue is resolved. Another appeal
will be sent to President Rakhimov calling on him to introduce to the
parliament a proposal for Tatar achieving state-language status.
Committee members pointed out that the issue should be resolved before
the 14 March Russian presidential elections.
(RFE/RL: Tatar-Bashkir Weekly Report, 20 January 2004)
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