Foreign minister claims Minsk has never divided people on language basis

February 16, Pozirk. Belarusian Foreign Minister Siarhiej Alejnik has praised linguistic diversity as a basis for mutually respectful dialogue and cooperation between countries and peoples, state media reported.

Alejnik spoke yesterday on the occasion of the International Mother Language Day. Foreign diplomats were present at the event in the Minsk City Hall.

Belarus “has never divided its people either by language or ethnicity,” the minister said.

The country has two state languages, whereas it used to have four (Belarusian, Yiddish, Polish and Russian in 1920-1933), he said.

He added that “our native Belarusian language has always occupied a special place and will continue to do so.” “It makes us strong and resilient, and its sweetness reflects Belarusians’ unbending will, distinctiveness, and the flavor of our richest culture,” he said.

For decades, the development of the Belarusian language has been the prerogative of citizen groups and NGOs. After the rigged presidential election in 2020, Łukašenka’s regime launched a large-scale crackdown that resulted in the dissolution of many organizations and groups that promoted Belarusian culture, including the Union of Belarusian Writers, Belarusian PEN, Francišak Skaryna Belarusian Language Society, and several private publishing houses focused on Belarusian literature and translations.

The government pursues a de facto policy of Russification. According to the census, the number of citizens who considered Belarusian as their mother tongue dropped from 85.6 percent in 1999 to 61.2 percent in 2019.

Nominally, 40 percent of the country’s schools are Belarusian, but only about 10 percent of students (just over 100,000) study there.