Salihorsk District Executive Committee ignores the rights of Belarusian-speaking citizens
The head of the Salihorsk District
Executive Committee (CEC) Aliaksandr Rymasheuski did not satisfy the
demand of the Salihorsk youth to create a Belarusian-language version
of the official website of the executive committee does not
contradict to requirements of the Constitution of the Republic of
Belarus, according to which both Belarusian and Russian are the state
languages of the Republic of Belarus.
One of the initiators of
the appeal, Aliaksei Valabuyeu, disagrees with this position: “The
right of citizens to use their national language is guaranteed by
Article 3 of the Law “On languages in the Republic of Belarus”.
Article 2 of the Law obliges the state authorities of the Republic of
Belarus, including the Salihorsk District Executive Committee, to
guarantee the development and functioning o the Belarusian language
in all spheres of public life. The Republic of Belarus must
demonstrate the state care about the free development and use of the
Belarusian language.”
The human rights defender also refers
to international norms. According to Aliaksei Valabuyeu, part 1 of
Article 2 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political
Rights, ratified by the Republic of Belarus, guarantees the the
respect of human rights irrespective of the language used by the
individual, including the right to receive information, guaranteed by
Article 19 of the document. Article 27 states that no one can be
denied the right to use his native language.
Moreover, the
applicants did not have any pretensions to the Russian version of the
website, they demanded the establishment of the Belarusian version,
but this moment was ignored in the official's answer.
“I
don't know, what more is there in this answer: boldness or usual
stupidity. I can conclude that the ideological department, which
prepared the text of the answer, is completely incompetent in such
issues and is not capable to make it juridically correctly... No
reasons were provided to explain the absence of the
Belarusian-language version of the website, though the existence of
such version would not contradict the Law “On Languages” either,”
commented Mr. Valabuyeu.
