The authorities of Belarus again followed the lead of nationalist Russophobes
The Belarusian authorities punished employees of the Slodych confectionery factory for refusing to respond to an appeal from language advocates in the Belarusian language.
This was reported by the opposition website “Belarusian Partisan”, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The founders of the “Movy for Language” initiative, Igor Sluchak and Alina Nagornaya, approached the Slodych confectionery factory with a request to add the Belarusian language to product packages. The factory considered that the complaint, drawn up only in the Belarusian language, infringes on the rights of its Russian-speaking employees.
“...By applying only in the Belarusian language, you have eliminated the opportunity for Russian-speaking OJSC employees responsible for office work to receive information about the essence of the request in the language that they use in everyday life. Thus, the Russian-speaking category of employees - and this is almost 100% - is discriminated against by you on the basis of language, which violates Art. 17 of the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus,” says Slodych’s response to the nationalists.
Sluchak and Nagornaya appealed this response, signed by chief technologist Maria Yaroshkina, to the prosecutor’s office and the administration of the Partizansky district of Minsk.
The prosecutor's office obliged the management of Slodych to give an answer in Belarusian and bring the employee to disciplinary liability. The district administration drew up a report and sent the case to court. The Department of Education of the Pervomaisky District drew up a protocol on violation of the legislation on languages (Article 10.16 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Republic of Belarus).
Sluchak and Nagornaya and their associates published detailed instructions on how to write appeals about the use of the Belarusian language and where to go in case of violation of language rights, and published a paper manual “Abaronim movu” (let's protect the language - ed.).
Thus, the persecution of Russian-speaking citizens of Belarus, mass cases of which took place before Belomaidan, continues.
In April 2020, the sports school in the Belarusian regional center of Klimovichi, at the request of nationalists, retroactively deprived teacher Inna Kordabneva of her award, who was careless in her video blog to speak critically about the study of the Belarusian language at school.
At the beginning of March in Minsk, a nationalist caused a scandal in one of the sports clubs because a Russian citizen who worked there could not serve him in Belarusian.
In February, nationalist-minded youth of Minsk staged a mocking flash mob in a coffee shop at the Kommunarka confectionery factory after one of them, Aramais Mirakyan, wrote on social networks that they rudely refused to serve him in Belarusian. Later it turned out that the young man lied.
In January, nationalists forced to dismiss and fined a Belarusian IT specialist through the court, who spoke unflatteringly about the Belarusian language on social networks.
In addition, the nationalist community demanded that the display of videos in Russian in Minsk minibuses be cancelled.
In August 2019, Belarusian nationalists began harassing a citizen who opposed the placement of a provocative poster in the Minsk metro.
And in May, the Belarusian opposition artist Ales Pushkin filed a complaint with the prosecutor's office of the city of Krupki against Pavel Chirkov, an employee of the Evroopt store, who refused to speak Belarusian with him.
According to the results of the 2009 census, 60% of Belarusians named Mau as their native language. This is 25% less than in 1999. At the same time, only 41% call Belarusian the language of everyday communication.
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