Hungarian FM calls new Ukrainian proposal to eradicate national minorities 'unacceptable'
The Ukrainian proposal that some of the billions of euros received from the European Union to maintain the operation of the state would be used toward the eradication of national minorities is unacceptable, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Wednesday in Geneva.
Considering the fact that millions of Hungarians live outside the borders of the country, the government is extremely sensitive to minority issues, and one of the focal points of its foreign policy is to protect the rights of the ethnic Hungarian minorities living outside Hungary, the minister said in a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council.
The politician called it unacceptable that Ukraine has been continuously and systematically taking away the rights of national minorities since 2014. Several harmful laws have been adopted in this area, making it impossible for national minority educational institutions to continue operating in their current form from September.
In addition, minority students will not be able to take school-leaving exams and entrance exams or attend vocational training in their native languages. Several ethnic Hungarian headmasters and teachers have also been dismissed, the minister added.
He also mentioned the proposal by Kiev to give around 1000 euros to families which enrol their children in Ukrainian language education rather than national minority education. The minister called it a serious step towards eradicating a minority.
While the EU supports the functioning of the Ukrainian state with billions of euros, some of these funds would be used against minorities by local authorities, he underlined.
„We do not have any special requests, just the restoration of former rights,” he stated.
As a neighbouring country, Hungary is facing the tragic consequences of the armed conflict day after day, and directly feels its negative consequences, FM Szijjarto emphasised. For this reason, Hungary will continue the largest-ever humanitarian aid programme in its history for as long as needed
„Millions of families are suffering, tens of thousands of people are dying. We believe that saving human lives is now the primary duty of the international community,” he stated.
„We don’t want more people to die, so the real question for us is how to save lives. Sending further weapons or imposing new sanctions that will hurt us more than Russia is certainly not the answer,” he stressed.
Peace can save human lives. Therefore Hungary calls for and immediate ceasefire and peace talks,” he added.
It is a „false hope and illusion”, he said, that there will be winners at the end of this war because there can only be losers, and the longer the war lasts, the more losers there will be and the greater the damage caused will be.
The risk of a third world war, the danger of a nuclear war breaking out, is greater than ever before, the minister warned.
„It would be great if the countries that are constantly taking decisions and making statements that risk prolonging and escalating the war would understand that they are playing with fire,” he said.
Perhaps it looks a little different from a distance of hundreds or thousands of kilometres, or from across an ocean, but believe me, as someone coming from a neighbouring country and representing a nation that has already lost lives, that we are in the 25th hour,
he said.
„I’d like to call on the international community to focus on peacemaking (…) The failure of diplomacy leads to war, the success of diplomacy leads to peace,” he said.
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