Ethnic Minority Rights: Abuse for Political Purposes
The Protector of Citizens – Ombudsman of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina expresses a concern regarding the statement of Milenko Jovanov, a representative of the Serbian Democratic Party, claiming that the state needs to introduce so-called linguistic patrols in the regions mostly populated by members of ethnic minorities. These patrols would assess the level of their majority language skills, particularly with the Hungarians, and by doing so supposedly establish the degree of their loyalty to the Serbian state as well. Such statements might deteriorate the current inter-ethnic situation in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina and cause fear with the members of the ethnic minority communities.
For quite some time now, the Protector of Citizens – Ombudsman institution has been drawing public, as well as the attention of relevant institutions, to the need for a quality Serbian language teaching in areas where ethnic minorities constitute the majority of the local population. The most recent institutional public statement from 21 February 2014 entitled ‘Quality official language teaching must not be under question’ indicates also the benefits of considering the possibility of introducing bilingual teaching in both Serbian and Hungarian where, for instance, Hungarians are the majority at the local level. Besides a very general and vague declarative support to this idea by the key political actors, the Ministry of Education and other relevant authorities have undertaken no measures to improve the situation and try to resolve these issues.
It is a fact, though, that Hungarians living in mostly Hungarian-inhabited settlements in the north of Vojvodina barely know any Serbian, but it is not – and cannot be – solely their own fault. The school is the only place where they can learn Serbian, as well as the only authority in charge of assessment of their acquired language skills and monitoring of their progress.
The Protector of Citizens – Ombudsman institution holds that political organizations have no authority whatsoever to implement such activities, especially when they serve nothing but political promotion at the moment when political relations between the Republic of Serbia and Hungary are at a very high and quality level.