July 2004

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OSCE DENOUNCES LINGUISTIC CLEANSING IN TRANSDNIESTRIA, MOLDOVA

July 2004 – A special OSCE Permanent Council meeting has been called for Thursday 22 July to examine the crisis in Moldova, where the authorities in the breakaway region of Transdniestria are ordering the closure of schools that teach the state language in Latin script. Moreover, the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, Rolf Ekeus, commented on the closure of the Moldavian school placed in Tiraspol, in the region of Transdniestria, stressing that “the forced closure […] is scandalous and irresponsible”. The Tiraspol School was forced to close last week when the armed police removed the school’s furniture and equipment. Some parents and teachers tried to block the police taking the material but they were also removed by the armed force. The action is especially relevant since it occurred one day after the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities visited the school; now, the school remains surrounded by police and the access is blocked. According to the OSCE, most likely, the action is designed to force the closure of all schools in the region which teach Moldovan/Romanian in Latin script. In accordance with the data given by OSCE, an estimated 40% of the population in the Transdniestrian region has Moldovan/Romanian as their mother tongue and approximately 5,000 children have been studying the language in Latin script for over ten years. However, Transdniestrian authorities claim that Moldovan is the only official language of the region when it is written in Cyrillic script, thus obstructing the efforts of the OSCE, which in 2003 brokered a formula to allow the schools to be legally registered with local authorities in Transdniestria.