A New York-i Hungarian Human Rights Foundation az alábbi angol nyelvű felhívást juttatta el az amerikai és európai törvényhozókhoz a szlovák nyelvtörvény tervezett módosításaival kapcsolatban.
Statement by the Hungarian Human Rights Foundation
on the Slovak Government’s Announcement to Retain
Sanctions and Fines in the Law on the State Language
This Wednesday, the Slovak Parliament is scheduled to debate yet newer amendments to the Law on the State Language submitted by Iveta Radicová’s recently-elected government.
According to media information, most of the sanctions and fines added in June 2009 will remain in effect, to be applied at the “discretion of the Ministry of Culture” and “only in extreme cases.” This is a dangerously flawed approach that continues to leave the rule of law at the whim of politics and the door open for further human rights violations.
After suffering for four long years under the nationalistic SMER-SNS yoke of the Fico government, the peoples of Slovakia deserve better; fair-minded individuals word wide were expecting more. The new government has a slim majority, but it needs to do what is right and show its mettle where it counts.
The Hungarian Human Rights Foundation calls upon the Slovak government to take immediate steps towards repealing all the discriminatory and punitive provisions — sanction and fines — of the 1995 Law on the State Language as amended June 30, 2009 [For background see: HHRF Report dated September 20, 2009: “Slovakia Curtails Free Speech through Restrictive Language Law, National Minorities Singled Out”]. Furthermore, the Parliament should adopt a comprehensive law on ethnic and linguistic minorities ensuring they are afforded full protection to retain and develop their cultural identities.
Experts and experience—and thousands of academicians have been signing a petition protesting the law for the past 1.5 years to this effect—have repeatedly shown that threats, fear and punishment are ill-advised ways to “enforce linguistic compliance” as this law with fines ranging from 100-5,000 euros intends.
While other countries in the region are actually taking bold steps towards greater equality, devolution and inclusion for minorities, Slovakia has precipitously fallen out of step in the past years.
The proposed changes would be half measures that would not solve the fundamental, flawed nature of this retrograde law which codifies inequality, divisiveness and intolerance. As such, it has no place in 21st Century Europe.
