The new Law on the Use of Languages in our country creates conditions for positive language discrimination. This was stated Monday by Academician Katica Kulavkova at the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU).

After the exposition of the President of MANU Academician Taki Fiti, submitted to the regular Annual Assembly of MANU, Kulavkova in her discussion pointed out that this law practices positive language discrimination to the detriment primarily to the Macedonian and all other minority languages compared to the Albanian language.

At this moment Macedonia is turned into a loose, unstable structure of linguistic, religious, cultural and other communities. It is unstable because it generates constantly, especially with this new law, miscommunication, misinterpretation, alienation of communities from one another, with a tendency to impose certain positive discrimination. So to impose the language of the minority as a language that will be not only state recognized, the Albanian, Turkish and every language everywhere have the character of an official language in our country. It’s not disputable, so it has been for decades. It is only about the scope of that officiality, the official character of one language, said Kulavkova.

She believes that if we have an identical scope in all languages or in two languages, then the acquired status of the Macedonian language is questionable. As for the Macedonian language, as she said, there is only a Council for the Macedonian language, and now they are introducing Agency, Inspectorate for the use of the Albanian language, sanctions for use of the Albanian language, proofreaders … or employment of hundreds of people from the language of a community.

Kulavkova thinks that harmony, cohesion, civilization is being violated, and asks what is the purpose of this law. According to her, MANU should make a contribution with its strategic research, a scientific conference on this topic.

Academician Abdulmenaf Bexheti addressed the audience first in Macedonian and then in Albanian language. After he started speaking in Albanian, the audience reacted that they did not understand what he was talking about and that there was no interpreter.

Bexheti continued in Macedonian language and said that the thesis that the Law on the Use of Languages was positive discrimination was wrongly set. He asked some of the relevant departments at MANU, for example, Linguistics, a scientific research that will prove that positive discrimination in one language violates or discriminates the other language.