UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues Fernand de Varennes has said Russian is the most discriminated against language in Eastern Europe, citing its artificial restriction in the Baltic states and Ukraine as an example
“In some of the Baltic States and Ukraine, very often these places are becoming more and more difficult for people to live because their rights are restricted, they are denied their rights… I will talk about those minority groups that are persecuted the most”, – de Warennes said.
The UN Special Rapporteur refers to these minorities as Roma, Jews and the Russian-speaking population.
“There are a lot of Russian-speaking people living in Latvia and Estonia – 200,000 in Latvia and a huge number of people in Estonia. There are also such people in Lithuania, Ukraine… The Vienna Commission and the Commission for the Protection of Minorities have been very critical of recent moves backward in terms of reducing the use of minority languages, for example Russian and Hungarian in Ukraine, and Russian in Latvia and Estonia in particular” , – he said
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Fernand de Warennes also added that in the countries listed there is also a difficult situation in the use of minority languages in education.
“Some even regulate the languages that can be used in private education. So – in a substantial number of schools, education in public universities, where teaching was mainly in a minority language” , – de Warennes summarised.