STOP linguicide
On March 21, 2022, at an extraordinary meeting of the General Assembly of the European Federation of National Language Institutions (EFNIL), the General Assembly accepted the State Language Protection Commissioner of Ukraine as a member of the federation.
Since Russia is imposing the Russian language on the population of Ukraine and trying to eradicate the use of the Ukrainian language in its occupied territories in Ukraine, the State Language Protection Commissioner of Ukraine has issued the informative page “STOP LINGUICIDE.”
Russia’s strategy of linguicide in the occupied territories of Ukraine.
The events in Ukraine have confirmed once again that Russia’s efforts to achieve the dominance of the Russian language in the fields of education and communication in the occupied territories of Ukraine are clearly political. We are currently witnessing Russia’s attempts to use language as an ideological weapon in its foreign policy, and its aim is to reduce the role and importance of the Ukrainian language in the local population’s sense of national identity and statehood.
Latvia has found itself in the same situation after the occupations of 1940 and 1944 when the Russian language gradually began to replace the Latvian language in all aspects of life. We can still see the political consequences of the invasion of the Russian language in Latvia on an everyday level and in the foreign policy Russia enacts towards its neighbors.
To protect one’s language is to protect one’s state.
