[lg policy] Ukraine: Party Of Regions MP Chernomorov Proposing Rada Grant Russian Status Of Interethnic And International Communication Language

[Harold Schiffman]

Party Of Regions MP Chernomorov Proposing Rada Grant Russian Status Of
Interethnic And International Communication Language (16:31, Monday,
September 24, 2012)

Ukrainian News Agency

Member of Parliament Oleksandr Chernomorov from the Party of Regions
faction is proposing that the Verkhovna Rada grants Russian status of
language of indigenous people and also language of interethnic and
international communication in Ukraine, reads draft law No.11243,
registered with the parliament on September 21.

The bill supposes amendments to the Law on Fundamentals of State
Language Policy.

It suggests to determine that the State provides citizens with the
right to free use of Russian as a language of Ukraine's indigenous
people, a language of interethnic and international communication, and
in the areas of compact settlement of citizens for whom Russian is
native language - its functioning on a par with the state one.

It also suggest to determine as indigenous the people who were living
on the territory of Ukraine before its creation within the existing
state boundaries.

"If Ukrainians have the right to the 'title nation', then Russians
have absolute freedom to be called 'indigenous people', and not
'ethnic minority', which they are not both in terms of quantitative
composition and the contribution they made to development of our
common civilization," the author remarks in the accompanying document.

Apart from this, the bill supposes that the State when realizing the
language policy ensures all-round development and functioning of
Ukrainian as the state language in all spheres of public life with
creation of a possibility of parallel usage of regional languages on
the territories where this is justified.

But alongside the draft suggests to assign the State's obligation to
create conditions for Russian to attain legal standing equal to that
of Ukrainian.

In addition, the bill supposes creation by the State of legislative
pre-requisites for gradual provision of status of second state
language to Russian.

In the explanatory note to the bill the author notes that in his
opinion current legislation concerning language policy narrows
language rights of the Russian-speaking Ukrainians as compared with
that level of their protection stipulated by the constitution.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, on August 8 President Viktor
Yanukovych signed the bill into law, stipulating official usage of
regional languages in the work of local bodies of power, if at least
10% of the inhabitants are the language native speakers.

Chernomorov stands in the parliamentary election, self-nominated, in
majority constituency No.2 in Simferopol, Crimea.

http://un.ua/eng/article/411919.html

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