RIGHTS: New Plea for Russian Minority (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

RIGHTS: New Plea for Russian Minority
Linus Atarah
http://www.ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27587

HELSINKI, Feb 23 (IPS) - The Mari minority in Russia are facing a steady
erosion of their cultural rights, a group of human rights campaigners
have said in a protest statement.

The Mari are a branch of the Finno-Ugric of the Uralic people. The
Uralics are an indigenous group spread across Russia and several of the
ex-Soviet republics. Uralic is also a family of languages with two
principal branches, the Finno-Ugric and Samoyed.

Uralic peoples differ from each other by race, religion and culture. The
western Finno-Ugrians are quite different from the Khants and Mansis in
Siberia who are closest to Hungarians. But Uralics share common origins
and practices that include a close relationship with nature, both
animate and inanimate.

The Mari number about three-quarters of a million, and about 43 percent
of them live in Mari El, a formally autonomous republic within the
Russian Federation. Most others live in neighbouring regions.. They
speak Volga-Finnic, a branch of the Finno-Ugric of the Uralic family of
languages. Bee-keeping is major business in the region.

The Mari El Association in Moscow issued an appeal earlier this month
highlighting the suppression of Mari peoples rights. That has led to an
international appeal, signed mostly by Estonians, Finns and Hungarians.
The signatories include also individuals from Britain and the United
States.

”We the representatives and friends of the Finno-Ugric peoples of the
world call on the Russian authorities at all levels to take immediate
steps to end the attacks on members of the democratic opposition in the
Republic of Mari El,” the petition says. ”We urge international human
rights organisations to join us in this cause.”

The local Mari El government is dominated by Russian-speaking people.

Among those who signed the appeal are former speaker of the Finnish
parliament Riitta Uosukainen, former president of Estonia Lennart Meri,
long-term adviser to the U.S. government Prof. Paul Goble, composers
Veljo Tormis from Estonia and Kari Rydman from Finland, the first
vice-president of the European Parliament committee on foreign affairs
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Prof. John Hiden from Britain, and former Finnish
foreign minister Pertti Paasio.

Paasio told IPS that the petition seeks to tell the world what is going
on within Russia. ”It will be a tragic loss to multi-ethnic culture in
Europe if the Russians succeed in totally suppressing the Mari language
and other minorities in the Russian Federation,” he said.

The Mari people have been given autonomy status by the Russian
Constitution but the authorities have not implemented it in practice,
Paasio said. Instead there has been a systematic attempt by Russian
authorities to deny Mari people use of their own language or to engage
in other cultural practices, he said.

Kalevi Wiik, a retired professor at the University of Turku in Finland
and a signatory to the petition says the director of Mari theatre in
Mari El was fired without any apparent reason last month. Vladimir
Kozlov, editor-in-chief of the Finno-Ugric newspaper 'Kudo+Kodu' was
attacked and seriously injured, Wiik told IPS.

The suppression of the Mari people is ”a reflection of the
non-democratisation in Russia today being carried out by the Russian
leader (Vladimir) Putin,” Wiik said.

A pan-Slavic movement is seeking to pave the way for Russian-only
culture in the country, Wiik said. The Komi people in the area are also
threatened, he said.

Mari groups will host the next world congress of Finno-Ugric studies
later this year.. The petition says it is therefore ”especially
important now that the Russian authorities in Moscow and in Mari El do
everything possible to end the abuse of the rights of the Maris.”
(END/2005)

Mari petition