Submit Your Work
Culture
International Relations
Saturday, July 11, 2020

The language war in Ukraine

This article is by
Syed Ahmed Uzair
Syed Ahmed Uzair
Eastern Europe

Share this article
Download as PDF
Cite this Article

Article Contributor(s)

Syed Ahmed Uzair

Article Title

The language war in Ukraine

Publisher

Global Views 360

Publication Date

July 11, 2020

URL

Vladimir Putin, Matteo Renzi and Petro Poroshenko

Vladimir Putin, Matteo Renzi and Petro Poroshenko  |  Source: Press Service of the President of the Russian Federation  via Wikimedia

The adoption of Ukrainian language by the citizens of Ukraine has emerged as an important aspect of Ukraine’s struggle for a sovereign nation. For centuries, the Ukrainian language has played second fiddle to the dominant Russian, thanks to the mighty influence of the Tsar empire and the Soviet Union. When Ukrainian language was declared as the official language of independent Ukraine in 1991, there was finally a hope that it would gain its rightful place as a National language of Ukraine. However, despite the enforcement of Ukrainian as the official language of the state, Russian continues to be very much prevalent in the country.

While Russian language is dominant in more urban areas, Ukrainian is spoken much more in the rural areas. The ongoing efforts to convince people into believing that the Russian speaking minority are being oppressed in the countryside. The other side of the language divide believes that the Ukrainian language is in far greater need for support from the state so it comes out of the shadow of Russian language.

The Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a hallmark of this complex language war that has been breeding in Ukraine for a long time. Both the Kremlin and Putin justified the annexure of Crimea, citing the need to defend the Russian speaking minority of Ukraine.

The language war has been Russia’s biggest tool in disrupting Ukraine. This was made clear when a United Nations Security Council meeting held on 16th July,2019 regarding Ukraine’s move to make Ukrainian their official language, became a heated argument between Russia and the West. While Russia made clear that they were defending the Russian speaking minority in Ukraine while respecting the official language of the state, the US, backed by its allies like France and Britain employed the meeting to demand an end to the Russian occupation of Crimea.

It was not a surprise at all when the Language Law was passed in 2019, intending to increase the influence of Ukrainian in the society, especially in spheres like media and public services. The language law states that Ukrainian shall be mandatory for all official purposes pertaining to the state as well as international treaties. This law appears to be in line with the broader public opinion. As per a poll conducted by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation and Razumkov Center in December 2019, 69% of Ukrainians were in favor of Ukrainian being the official language of the state, while maintaining the freedom to use Russian in daily life.

Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was a supporter of the law that was passed on May 15th, 2019. However, Volodymyr Zelenskiy who was elected Ukraine’s president on May 20, 2019, has described the law as a set of “prohibitions and punishments” citing that it will complicate bureaucratic procedures and increase the number of officials rather than decreasing it.

Ukraine, it seems, is emerging from the perils of the language war and looks to adopt a bilingual approach for dealing with the language challenge. For instance, Russian speaking Ukrainians have been central in Ukraine’s resistance to the Russia backed insurgents in Eastern region of Ukraine . The election of a Jewish Russian-speaker, Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Ukraine’s sixth president in 2019 is seen by many Ukrainians as a positive step for the country’s politics of language.

Despite all the progress, however, the language war continues to be a sensitive issue in Ukraine. A Ukranian social media user on 11th June 2020 posted an English and Ukrainian bilingual McDonalds' menu, which implied that Russian language is removed from the menu. The post became viral soon and was picked up by a pro-Kremlin politician and social media star Anatoliv Shariy, who claimed that the menu reflected on the negative attitude towards the Russian speaking Ukrainians. McDonald's issued a statement clarifying that Russian language option was never present in its menu anywhere in Ukraine, but the damage had been done.

It seems that the saga of using language for political gains will keep on running in Ukrainian as both sides on the partisan divide are progressively entrenching their respective positions.

Support us to bring the world closer

To keep our content accessible we don't charge anything from our readers and rely on donations to continue working. Your support is critical in keeping Global Views 360 independent and helps us to present a well-rounded world view on different international issues for you. Every contribution, however big or small, is valuable for us to keep on delivering in future as well.

Support Us

Share this article

Read More

February 4, 2021 4:52 PM

Persecution of Uighur Muslims in China and the silence of Muslim Countries

Uighur are natives of  Xinjiang province of China who are Muslims and regard themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations. Xinjiang province has been under the control of China since it was annexed in 1949 and many Uighurs still identify their homeland by its previous name, East Turkestan. There are around 11 million Uighurs in Xinjiang and China claims that Uighurs hold extremist views that are a threat to national security.

In 2017, the Xinjiang government passed a law prohibiting men from growing long beards and women from wearing veils and dozens of mosques were also demolished.

As per the report of UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Descrimination, the Chinese government has detained at least one million Uighurs in the detention camps in Xinjiang, China. After denying the existence of the camps for a long time, when the photos of the camps emerged, the Chinese government called them “re-education centres'' for Uighurs though the former detainees said they were detained, interrogated and beaten because of their religion, and not “re-educated.”

In July 2019 to the U.N. Human Right Council, 22 countries, mainly European countries, responded to “disturbing reports of large scale arbitrary detentions of Uighurs” and condemned the Chinese leadership.

Four days later, 37 countries, defended China’s “remarkable achievements in the field of human rights” by protecting the country from “terrorism, separatism and religious extremism.” The list of the 37 countries also included Muslim-majority countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Qatar etc.

At the end of October 2019, 23 countries including France, the United Kingdom, United States denounced the repression of the Uighurs at the UN Committee on Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs. Nevertheless, Beijing won the support of 54 countries, who praised the Communist Party’s management of Xinjiang.

In February 2019, Saudi Arabia showed their “respect” for Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader before they signed major commercial contracts with China. Egypt wants Beijing to finance its infrastructure and hence allowed the Chinese police to interrogate Uighur exiles on its soil in 2017. Pakistan, who has talked about the mistreatment of Rohingyas, has been silent on Uighurs since the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative is going on in the country.

Even Iran, who issues occasional criticism wants support from China and hence keeps the criticism coded. “There is a lot of sympathy for the Uighurs in Turkey, but the reality is that Erdogan needs China as an ally for economic reasons and to counteract the West’s diplomatic pressure on issues like Syria,” said Rémi Castets, a political scientist.

In 2017, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation responded very differently to the Rohingya Crisis (Myanmar’s military crackdown on the country’s Rohingyas), where countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey defended the rights of the Muslim minority group in Myanmar and actively condemned the treatment of Rohingyas in the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.  

The question here arises is that contrary to the sentiments of their citizens, why do Muslim states stay silent over China’s abuse of the Uighurs?

Sophie Richardson, the director of China at Human Rights Watch, has a short and simple answer — there is less solidarity for Uighur than Rohingyas or Palestinians because China has managed to win these countries’ support due to its economic might.

Only time will tell how long these countries will continue to give preference to the economic interests over the anti-China sentiments of the citizens.

Read More