The Balkans: The Language Issue

Posted 26 October 2007 15:10 GMT

Countries	Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Serbia, Montenegro
Topics	Arts & Culture, Governance, History, War & Conflict, International Relations, Politics, Language, Ethnicity & Race

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繁體中文	· （短訊）巴爾幹半島：語言議題
简体中文	· （短讯）巴尔干半岛：语言议题
Malagasy	· Faritry Balkan : « Resaka fiteny »

Bosnia Herzegovina

Balkan Baby writes about the “language issue” in the Balkans: “What language do we speak when we are in the countries that once made up Yugoslavia? In Slovenia and Macedonia the answer is quite simple since these two countries both had their own languages which were recognised by the Yugoslav Government. For Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia the answer is maybe not quite so clear.”

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Updates about Eastern & Central Europe

10 February 2012

Macedonia

GV Author Filip Stojanovski posts pictures of Skopje's snowy and icy streets and reports on his blog: “[…] the pavements and the side streets in the municipality of Centar remain icy. Some are covered by layers of ice or re-frozen slush, by old frozen snow, or an unevenly hardened mash of snow and 'salt.' Fokus daily claimed that the authorities avoid declaring nationwide state of emergency in order to ‘prove' that they were prepared for the snow.”

• Veronica Khokhlova

9 February 2012

Russia

On February 9, 2012, following the widely-discussed leaks of pro-Kremlin mailboxes, LiveJournal, where the leaks were published, became temporarily unavailable, Lenta.ru reported [ru]. Russian representative of Anonymous group @OP_Russia, suggested [ru] that it was a DDoS attack to hide the evidence of massive wrongdoings (including corruption, thievery, political provocations, and cybercrime) [ru] by Nashi youth movement. Later that day @OP_Russia took responsibility for taking down 3 websites of United Russia party: mos-partya.ru, er-region.ru, and er-kaluga.ru.

• Alexey Sidorenko

Russia

At OpenDemocracy.net, Olesya Gerasimenko talks to the parents of three young neo-Nazi men who were convicted of race murders: “One has adopted the views of their only child and says that violence is necessary. One blames the politicians that have incited adolescents to street fighting. One cries, convinced of the innocence of his son. They are all different, but they have all asked themselves one and the same question: ‘am I to blame for what happened?’”

• Veronica Khokhlova

Macedonia

While the authorities in Macedonia remain silent on the country's stance on the ACTA, bloggers, such as Airborne, emphasize the need to gain more knowledge [mk], as the traditional media mostly ignore the issue: “Maybe, one of these days, we'll just simply wake up in the ACTA-ruled world.” The new media attempting to fill this gap in local languages include Metamorphosis and IT.com.mk. Endek blog advocates [mk] standing up for Internet freedom by joining international protest movements.

• Filip Stojanovski

8 February 2012

Russia

Andrey Rylkov Foundation writes about the first case of enforcement of the domain seizure rules in the “.ru” and “.рф” domain zones. The rules [ru] (Article 5, point 5.5) , updated on November 11, 2011 allow any law enforcement agency (like police, Federal Security Service, Prosecutor's office or Federal Drug Control Services (FDCS)) to request domain seizure without a court order. On February 3, 2012 FDCS successfully seized the domain of rylkov-fond.ru, a website of Rylkov Foundation that had severely criticized situation with drug trafficking.

• Alexey Sidorenko

Bulgaria: Thousands Take Part in Anti-ACTA Protests

Black March Boycott protest ACTA, do NOT buy Movies, Music or Video Games for the...
Great article,great job.Even though we have much bigger problems in Bulgaria than ACTA i feel...
Next time we will be there again :)