Rule of equality is for more equal ones only

When I was still a student I received a scholarship from a foundation for a summer German course. After I arrived to Bremen I was examined from my previous knowledge and sent to learn the language on the Mittelstuffe II level. There were many, many other students from various countries participating in that course, who also were assigned to groups on different levels, accordingly with their knowledge on the German language. After finishing the course, everyone had to pass a test on the level on which he or she had studied. The organisers of the course did not even think about, let’s say, preparing the final test on one and the same level for all students in order to make Goethe’s language better-known. If someone went crazy like that, though, and he or she would order a unification of the test for students who were taught according to quite different programmes, he or she would be at once called a troublemaker, a nihilist and an ignorant of the law. The person would probably be forced to take a course on the equality of the law and the prohibition of discrimination.

I am writing, hypothetically, about this situation that could not happen in Germany anyway, to show you how absurd situations can happen in Lithuania. Here, it is perfectly possible to force students of schools with a non-Lithuanian language as the teaching one to pass their final high school exam from the national language on a level, on which they were not taught. All this was made through high-handed decisions of politicians (or pseudo-politicians). The Lithuanian Ministry of Education, by unifying the final high school examination for graduates of schools of national minorities, has burdened students with 818 classes which never took place but the knowledge that was supposed to be gained is demanded during the examination. If Schreibikus from the sayings was treated in such a way in Germany, the administrator who invented such an idea would be very poor…

Let’s go back to Lietuva, though. After the quarrelsome decision nobody was punished here, only some politicians have finally gone to seek some wisdom and they have introduced reliefs for national minorities’ schools, which were to neutralise the consequences of the unlawful unification of the “matura” exam. When the situation has become more or less stable on the political level, Lithuanian courts started working. The Supreme Administrative Court, to which the complaint on reliefs during the final high school examination for national minorities’ schools was sent, has considered the case perfectly. For those who initiated the whole unification mess, of course. The court has decided that the reliefs are contradictory to the constitutional rule of equality. It is prohibited to create privileges and, after all, national minorities have received those, since they were given the reliefs. This is what was produced by the panel, with a lot of effort. Moreover, the judges ordered the state, in which students belonging to national minorities groups were taking the exam needing a knowledge which they were not given to be re-established. No reliefs here. In this case, if one wanted to use the logic of the Supreme Court, everything is Ordnung. No inequality. No discrimination. At all.

Schreibikus, say something, because I can’t cope up with it.

Tadeusz Andrzejewski

P.S. This case should end up in Strasburg, in my opinion.

Source: http://l24.lt/pl/opinie-i-komentarze/item/13077-zasada-rownosci-tylko-dla-rowniejszych

Tłumaczenie by Emilia Zawieracz w ramach praktyk w Europejskiej Fundacji Praw Człowieka, www.efhr.eu. Translated by Emilia Zawieracz within the framework of a traineeship programme of the European Foundation of Human Rights, www.efhr.eu.