Slovak News Back to the news
Caplovic Meets Chinese National Minorities Minister
Tuesday 23 February 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Beijing, February 23 (TASR) - Slovak Deputy Premier for a Knowledge-based Society, European Affairs, Human Rights and Minorities Dusan Caplovic met Chinese National Minorities Minister Yang Jing on Tuesday to discuss national minority issues, Caplovic's spokesman Michal Kalinak told TASR on the same day.
The two politicians compared notes and experiences vis-a-vis policies regarding national minorities and ethnic groups in their respective countries. Both ministers stated that it's important to provide equal room to every minority community in terms of self-realisation, further development and protection of native languages, cultures, education and traditions.
Caplovic said that every state needs to support integration and not assimilation of national minorities; so it's only natural to use the official state language as a tool for integrating minorities while allowing them develop their own native languages at the same time. In this respect, Slovakia honours its commitments stemming from a number of European documents, namely the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, exercised within the EU, the Council of Europe and the OSCE.
The Chinese minister told Caplovic about the situation in the Uyghur autonomous area of Xinjiang and western Tibet, which are home to minorities that China has been accused of suppressing. Caplovic said that every state and every larger region has its own characteristics that need to be taken into consideration when formulating minority policies.
Caplovic pointed to the destructive tendencies that he claimed certain national minorities displayed in the period between the World Wars, tendencies that were abused in favour of the separatist and revisionist aims of certain states, and contributed to the outbreak of WWII not only in Europe but around the world. Because of this, Slovakia rejects any separatist tendencies aimed against state sovereignty, whether they be in Kosovo, Serbia or Georgia. Caplovic said that such problems need to be addressed with intelligence and not force.
All rights reserved. Any publishing or further dissemination of press releases and photographs from TASR's resources without TASR's prior written approval constitutes a violation of the Copyrights Act.
