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REPORT ON LANGUAGE RIGHTS IN EUSKAL HERRIA PRESENTED (Behatokia.org)
July 2004 – Behatokia, the Basque Language Observatory for Linguistic Rights, has presented its 2003 annual report on the situation of language rights in Euskal Herria, i.e. the Basque-speaking areas (literally, the country of Euskara), and its conclusions are not very encouraging as they confirm the main conclusions drawn in Behatokia’s two previous reports. In general terms, the present report, which is based on an analysis of 737 cases, underlines that language rights are systematically infringed in the three administrative divisions in which Basque is spoken: the Basque Autonomous Community, the Autonomous Community of Navarre, and the department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques in France. Behatokia claims that in the great majority of cases the government administration does not even comply with the legislation in force and that infringement takes place at all levels of public administration, mentioning for instance the Basque Autonomous Community’s ministries of Health, Justice and Home Affairs. In particular, the report draws attention to the cases of Navarre and France: Navarre is considered to be “the counter-model of Europe”, because its government has set out a reduction of legally recognised linguistic rights instead of granting wider rights, and France does not recognise legal rights for the Basque-speaking community and neither has it signed and/or ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. In the opinion of Behatokia, this situation worsens the speakers’ perception of their right to use their own language in all spheres of life, which makes them regard this situation of “inferiority and legal subordination” as “normal”. In order to reverse this trend, Behatokia proposes to establish a specific judicial-administrative mechanism to guarantee language rights and that the official status of the language be recognised in all Basque territories.
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