forwarded message

[Mari Rhydwen]

Here is a message from Tove Skutnabb-Kangas

Dear Mari and others
The Barcelona conference was not a grass-roots happening at all.
Neither was it open to everybody, so Robin could not have gone anyway
even if the university had had the money - nobody was there in their
individual capacity but had to represent organisations, and these had
to agree to sign the Declaration in advance, in order to participate,
even if they only got the final Declaration on arrival. (I
represented AILA, the International Association for Applied
Linguistics, and only gave a provisional signature).

The final document is a massive one, with 52 (or was it 53? I don't
have any of the papers here now) Articles, immensely detailed. It has
both positive and negative features. According to it, those entities
defined as LINGUISTIC COMMUNITIES (rather than LINGUISTIC GROUPS, or
EVERYBODY, the three different categories of beneficiaries in the
document) would have a lot of rights, many of them completely
unrealistic for almost any linguistic minorities in the world (except
Catalans, Basques, Finland Swedes, English- and Afrikaans-speakers in
South Africa, Francophones in Canada, and, maybe, very few others).
The other two groups have fewer rights, and the right which in my
view is the most important formal right for the maintenance of
languages and intergenerational transmission, the right to mother
tongue medium education at least at primary level, is not there at
all for LINGUISTIC GROUPS and EVERYBODY.
I have a lengthy analysis of some aspects of it, in
comparison with other human rights instruments, in the opening
plenary I gave at the international conference on language rights in
Hong Kong 22-24 June. The "theoretical" papers, including mine, will
be published fairly soon and I'll give the details as soon as we have
negotiated them finally (I am coediting that volume, together with
Peter Grundy and Nancy Choi from the Hong Kong end of the organising
committee - the other part of the committee was here in Roskilde
(Bente Bakmand, Hartmut Haberland, Carol Henriksen, Robert Phillipson,
Bent Preisler,  Anne-Grete Routley and myself). Phil Benson from Hong
Kong has all the information about the Hong Kong conference and its
other publications, email
"Phil Benson, English Centre, Hong Kong University"
<PBENSON at hkucc.hku.hk>

The Barcelona conference was organised by the International PEN
Club and CIEMEN, email
ciemen at abaforum.es

and they of course have all the information. In haste, greetings
Tove Skutnabb-Kangas

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Roskilde University, Dept of Languages and
Culture, 3.2.4., PB 260, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark, phone 45-46-75 77
11/2740, fax 45-46-75 44 10, private: Troenninge Mose 3, DK-4420
Regstrup, Denmark, phone 45-53-46 44 12
email: TOVESK at babel.ruc.dk

Mari Rhydwen, Communication Studies,Humanities, Perth, WA 6150, Australia

Telephone: 09 360 2217  Fax: 09 360 6367