- July 11, 2013
- 217
Experts from the European Council investigated the situation of national minorities in the Šalčininkai District Municipality
On July 9, 2013, a delegation of experts from the Advisory Committee of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities visited the city of Šalcininkai. Among the members of the Committee there were Emilia Drumeva from Bulgaria, Anastasia Crickley from Ireland, and Charlotte Altenhoener-Dion from the Secretariat of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities at the European Council. The aim of this visit was to investigate the situation of national minorities in the Šalčininkai District Municipality.
The guests met with Zdzislav Palevič, the mayor of the Šalčininkai District Municipality; Andrzej Andruszkiewicz, the deputy mayor; the management of the Šalčininkai District Municipality; and the representatives of social organisations in the Šalčininkai District Municipality, including various religious organisations and organisations of the Polish, Russian, Belarusian, and Jewish national minorities.
Mayor Palevič talked about the peculiarity of the region as well as the situation and problems of the local national minorities. In his speech on national minorities, the mayor referred to the example of the Polish minority in Lithuania, focusing on the realisation of the articles contained in the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities in both the ŠalčininkaiDistrictMunicipality and the whole of Lithuania. The articles of the Convention guarantee that every person belonging to a national minority has the right to freely speak and use their mother tongue, and to write down their names in the original spelling. However, as the mayor emphasized, none of the articles is realised. The courts in Lithuania ordered the ŠalčininkaiDistrictMunicipality to remove any non-Lithuanian inscriptions from its buildings, even though 80 per cent of its inhabitants are of Polish nationality. Moreover, the administrative director is constantly fined for boards with Polish names of the streets. As mayor Palevič said, the National Minorities Act expired in 2010. The document, at least to some extent, had regulated the rights of national minorities. Consequently, the situation of national minorities is presently worsening, which in turn leads to their assimilation with the mainstream society, he continued.
“It’s worth mentioning that such policy is contradictory with the postulates of civil integration and the right to nationality, its cultivation, and maintenance, which are laid down in the documents of the United Nations, UNECSO, the European Council, and the European Union. Civil integration, which aims at the assimilation of citizens, should not take place in a multicultural, democratic, and free society. Civil integration ought to be built on the foundations of tolerance with the right to preserve and protect national identities, languages, traditions, and cultures. This postulate can and should be realised,” said the mayor of the Šalčininkai District Municipality.
The representatives of the Committee investigated whether and how the rights of other national minorities in the Šalčininkai District Municipality are respected, including Russians, Belarusians, Jews, and Roma people. The representatives of the Committee listened to the accounts of the representatives of the organisations of the minorities present at the meeting.
“Today, we run both Polish and Russian schools and organisations. We also hold various events. However, we are very much worried about our future as the country’s policy is not conducive to national minorities. The maturity exam in the Lithuanian language has been standardised. In the region, where 80 per cent of inhabitants belong the Polish national minority and 11 per cent – to other national minorities, any inscriptions in the languages of these minorities are forbidden. Will there still be any schools in a few years’ time?” rhetorically asked Nikołaj Amilewicz, the chairman of the Centre of Belarusian Culture.
Presenting the ethnic situation, the participants of the meeting emphasized that the Šalčininkai District Municipality aims to preserve the tradition of a multicultural and multilingual region. In Eišiškės, there is Dom Polski (literally, the Polish House). In the Centre of Belarusian Culture and the Centre of Ukrainian Culture in Šalčininkai, the representatives of Roma people can study the Russian language, the one that is the most accessible to them. Every year a part of the funds from the municipality’s budget is allotted to finance various events of national minorities and other activity in this area.
The delegation from the European Council also visited the Jan Śniadecki Junior High in Šalčininkai, where they met with headmasters and the teaching staff of local schools, graduates, and their parents. Regina Markiewicz, the manager of the Department of Education and Sport of the local municipality, presented the situation of the school system in the region and the consequences of the revised regulations concerning the standardisation of the maturity exam in Lithuanian for schools of national minorities and schools with Lithuanian as a language of instruction. The standardisation of the exam negatively affected its scores as well as the scores in other exams because students had devoted more attention to prepare for the exam in Lithuanian and therefore could not prepare properly for their other exams. The guests admitted that the time for preparing the standardised exam had been definitely too short and that, within two years’ time, students had not been able to make up for the curricular differences. The headmasters present at the meeting also emphasized the problems of financing schools of national minorities, drawing the listeners’ attention to the fact that the current methodology does not reveal the real needs of schools of national minorities and is not conducive to their maintenance.
“We understand your anxieties and concerns about the situation of national minorities. The Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities is the tool which defines the rights of national minorities in Europe. We want to assure you that we have listened to your worries and problems which we will now try to solve,” said Charlotte Altenhoener-Dion, the representative of the Secretariat of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities at the European Council.
On July 10, 2013, the delegation met with the representatives of the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language.
Tłumaczenie by Elwira Łykus w ramach praktyk w Europejskiej Fundacji Praw Człowieka, www.efhr.eu. Translated by Elwira Łykus within the framework of a traineeship programme of the European Foundation of Human Rights, www.efhr.eu.
