STUPKA, DRACH ISSUE ULTIMATUM TO PRESIDENT, DEMANDING HE CONDEMN LANGUAGE LAW
July 5, 2012
Kyiv Post
Members of the Public Humanitarian Council under the president of Ukraine have spoken out against "legalizing Russian as a second state language in Ukraine" and demanding that President Viktor Yanukovych express his position on the language law.
In particular, the Ukrainian people's artist and art director at the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater, Bohdan Stupka, and Hero of Ukraine and well-known poet Ivan Drach are ready to quit the Public Humanitarian Council in protest against this law.
"Through this bill, the ruling Regions Party is making an attempt against the most sacred value of the Ukrainian people - its language. The Ukrainian language is constitutionally enshrined as the sole state language in Ukraine, while the provision of regional status to the Russian language and 17 other minority languages is nothing but an attempt to legitimize the Russification of Ukraine," Stupka and Drach said in a statement to the president.
They said they believe that nothing poses a threat to the Russian language in Ukraine. Protecting the Russian language like this is endangering the existence of the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian statehood, the authors of the appeal said.
"The Ukrainian people will not tolerate this and will demand that the Ukrainian president, as guarantor of the Constitution, put an end to the unconstitutional actions of the Regions Party, which, together with the communists, is trying to continue the communist policy of Ukraine's Russification," reads the statement.
They also asked Yanukovych, as head of the Public Humanitarian Council, to urgently convene a meeting of the council and express his position on this law.
