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Linguistic Human Rights
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A place for
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Violations of Linguistic Rights in the World,
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New Slovak language law - discrimination of minority languagesThe Slovak Parliament passed a controversial amendment of the Slovak Language Law on Tuesday, 30 June, as reported on Eurolang. The law restricts the use of languages other than Slovak in public communication and introduces fines amounting up to 5,000 euros. Opposition to the new law has been mounting across Europe with MEPs, member states and the OSCE all voicing their concerns over a law which will inflict punishment for "incorrect language use".One example is that patients in health care wanting to use their minority language in settlements where the percentage of the minority population is below 20% will be subject to these sanctions. The system will be supervised by a new unit considered as a language police. EBLUL - European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages: Opposition mounts to Slovakia's language law Recommended link: |
Malaysia police fire tear gas at language protestThe protesters planned to march to the royal palace to ask the king to intervene in the row over schools teaching science and maths in English rather than in the Malay language. Many Malay teachers and linguists complain that a six-year-old policy of using English has hurt efforts to modernize their mother tongue and to develop a scientific lexicon in Malay. "It was a peaceful march. They shot (teargas) without any warning" - a protester said. International Herald TribuneRecommended link: |
The Danish Social Democrat MP Mette Frederiksen wants to remove the children from the immigrant minority parents.The Danish Social Democrat MP Mette Frederiksen wants to force immigrant minority parents who "have poor Danish competence" and do not speak Danish with their children at home, to send their children to (Danish-medium) daycare when the children are one year old. If the parents refuse, she wants to remove the children from the parents. Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Robert Phillipson wrote a long debate article ("Kronik") in the large Danish daily Politiken, to protest, showing that the suggestion violates many international, European and Nordic human rights agreements (including the UN Genocide Convention). It also ignores all serious research that shows that the longer minority children have their own mother tongue as the main daycare and teaching language, the better they also become in the dominant language of the country, provided they have good teaching in it given by bilingual teachers/care-takers.Politiken had a supportive leader the same day. There has been a lively debate since, with almost 50 comments, some with racist tendencies. Recommended links: |
Australia: "English in, culture out ..."The australian Northern Territory Education Minister, Marion Scrymgour (herself an Aboriginal woman) says, talking about bilingual schools in remote communities:"I've made it very clear to those schools that we are saying that language and culture is not part of the school." - Read more Recommended links: |
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