DUSHANBE, July 28, Asia-Plus — Deputy chairman of the committee for implementation of the language law under the government of Tajikistan, Dr. Abdughaffor Jourayev has published an article about “hysteria” that was raised by some Russia media over the new Tajik bill on state language. The full text of the article was posted on website of Tajik national news agency Khovar on July 25.
The article, in particular, says that if the first state language law adopted on July 22, 1989, concerned all the languages, used in Tajikistan, including the Russian language, while in the new bill, the matter is only of the state language. “That is why it does not have specific reference to the status of Russian any other language, though Part 2 of Article 4 says that all nationalities and ethnicities living in Tajikistan have the right to freely use their native languages with the exception of cases provided by this law.”
Dr. Jourayev note that like the national flag, emblem and anthem, the state language is also one of symbols of the nation, dedicated to unite all citizens of the country.
“Is it possible to live and work in Russia itself without knowing language of this country? Or in the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, China?” Dr. Jourayev asks. He believes that the new law does not hurt rights of other languages used in the country.
We will recall that Russia’s RIA Novosti on July 23 released a report, noting that Tajikistan”s president has proposed banning the Russian language from being used in public institutions and official documents, a move he said would promote the development of Tajik and bolster patriotism in the country.
“The dignity of a nation is determined, above all, by how people preserve and respect their language,” Emomali Rahmon said in a televised address late on Wednesday.
Rahmon urged a new language law to amend 1989 legislation that defined Tajik as the official language and Russian as a language of “interethnic communication,” which gave the latter a de facto official status allowing people to use it in dealing with authorities, and receive information and documents in Tajik or Russian.
The new draft law proposed by the president and submitted to parliament obliges all nationals to know Tajik and speak it in official situations and public workplaces.
In the Soviet period, Russian was the lingua franca among the various ethnic groups in Tajikistan and other ex-Soviet republics. Many ethnic Russians have fled Tajikistan since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the ensuing civil war, but Russian is still spoken by much of the native population, RIA Novosti said. Russian is still an official language in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and it is also widely spoken in Ukraine and some other parts of the former Soviet Union.
