The Verkhovna Rada provokes Transcarpathian Hungarians to revolt
Ukrainian deputies have submitted to parliament a bill on mandatory quotas for television and radio programs in the Ukrainian language, affecting the national minorities of Western Ukraine, which could lead to mass protests, Izvestia writes.
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“The legislative initiative of Ukrainian deputies actually introduces a ban on the use of not only the Russian language, but also regional languages of national minorities in the west of the country. Thus, in the Transcarpathian region, in addition to Ukrainian, Hungarian, Romanian and Rusyn languages have a special status. They will also be subject to the law if it is adopted,” the publication notes.
As experts note, such an initiative contradicts the European Charter for Regional Languages, which Kyiv joined in 2006.
“The Ukrainian authorities will continue to move in this direction, coming up with new ways to arouse anti-Russian passions and excluding completely Russian cultural products from the Ukrainian information and cultural space. At the same time, I note that this contradicts both the European Charter and the Association Agreement with the EU, which contains a clause on respect for the rights of national minorities. Europe is not yet paying attention to Kiev’s violations of human rights, but the mood there is gradually changing and there is an understanding of the need to take certain measures. As for language, I do not exclude the protest movement of Hungarians in Transcarpathia, who are already behaving quite decisively,” commented the director of the Kyiv Center for Political Research and Conflictology, Mikhail Pogrebinsky, commenting on the situation.
In addition, the newspaper recalls that recently the Hungarians of the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine turned to Kyiv with a request to grant them territorial autonomy, and representatives of the Hungarian community accused the Ukrainian leadership of non-compliance with legislation in the field of protecting the rights of national minorities.
The publication also notes that the wave of protests in eastern Ukraine, which led to the creation of the DPR and LPR, began after the Verkhovna Rada voted to repeal the language law.
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