THE AROMANIAN TRAGEDY CONTINUES*

New appeal

to the Parliamentary Assembly

and to the Commission for Culture and Education

of the Council of Europe

Subsequent to our appeal dated Mai 14th, 1994, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a proposal of resolution („Ferrarini“, named after the first signatory) that requested on May 30th 1994 to examine the dramatic situation of the Aromanians - a latinphone population from the Balkans.

After three years of thoroughful research, the rapporteur Lluis Maria de Puig - Member of the Parliament - together with the Commission for Culture and Education of the Council of Europe drew up a detailed report that was as well as the Recommendation 1333/1997 for the Aromanian Language and Culture appropriated by the Parliamentary Assembly in its plenary meeting dated June 24th 1997.

After two more years of procrastinations due to the interventions of „pseudoexperts“ denying the Aromanians the existence of their own language, the Committee of Ministers also adopted the Recommendation 1333 through the document 8428 published by the Council of Europe on June 15th, 1999.

Even though three years have passed since the adoption of this Recommendation by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and one year since its adoption by the Committee of Ministers, no serious measures for the practical application of the stipulations of the Recommendation were taken in any of the countries where Aromanians live in compact communities. Also, the assimilation process of the latinophones south to the Danube has not been stopped anywhere.

Presently, the Aromanians are offcially recognized as a distinct nation only in the Republic of Macedonia. But even there, their cultural situation has not been improved. The old and insistent requests of the Aromanians are still unsolved. Here are some of them:

· officialities in Skopje have not taken any measures in simplifying the formalities for the Aromanians to recover their names before the communist regime, when their names were slavicized

· the obligatory study of Aromanian as mother tongue in the elementary schools attended by the Aromanian children is not offcial yet.

· there have not been yet created any kindergardens for the Aromanian children .

· religious service in Aromanian is not allowed in the churches built and attended by the Aromanians

· the high school building that belonged to the Aromanian community of Bitolia has not been given back yet to this community

· the radio and television broadcastings are given very little time

· -the Aromanian newspapers and books are not being financed / sponsored enough by the officialities.

· - no measures have been taken for the thouroughful education of teachers of Aromanian and of young Aromanians to study the Aromanian language, literature, history and civilisation in a special department within the State University of Skopje

In the other countries the cultural situation of the Aromanian communities is even more dramatic.

In Albania for instance, where the Aromanians are the second biggest population after the Albanians, they still have not been recognized as a distinct ethnic minority. No action was taken for the practical application of the paragraph 8 of the Recommendation 1333 with reference to the use of language in schools, churches and mass-media. There is only one church that is being built in Corcea, where an Aromanian priest holds the religious service in his mother tongue. Only in the city of Djavata, in a private house, a teacher teaches Aromanian without any offcial support. There is no radio or TV channel for regular broadcasting in Aromanian. The Aromanian language and culture are considered a folkloric attachment of the Albanian people. While the Albanese make enormous sacrifices to protect their cultural particularities in the countries where they represent a minority, the Aromanians cannot understand the indifference of the Albanese offcialities and of the European Community towards the forced denationalisation of the latinophones in Albania by perpetuating the interdiction of favouring their own language and culture.

In Greece, where the majority of the Aromanians live, no favourable changes were taken in the spirit of the Recommendation 1333. Further on, in order to browbeat the associations that would dare to request the application of the Recommendation from Strasbourg, the chairman of the Association of the Aromanians of Athens, the architect Sotir Bletsa, is on criminal pursuit for having hold and shown to his fellows a map of the minority languages in the European Union countries (including Greece), published by the „Office for Less Spread Languages“ in Dublin, and sponsored by the European Community.

* * *

The Aromanians still believe that their natural, elementary ethnical rights can be gained in Europe even by the ethnies that do not use force and political tensions. For their loyalty towards the countries the Aromanians live and work in, bringing their contributions to the development of each state in all the fields, and for their role as promotors of the relations of cooperation among all the south-eastern ethnies, the Aromanians request further on the support of the European community that adopted the Recommendation 1333 and ask the Council of Europe and its Parliamentary Assembly:

· to request the governments of the states where Aromanians communities live to give official explanations with reference to the way the stipulations of the Recommendation 1333/97 have been put into practice

· for the Commission for Culture of the Council of Europe to draw up a new report regarding the application in the past 3 years of the Rec 1333 in all the countries it refers to

· to monitorize the states that do not respect the stipulations of the Rec 1333/97

· to find financial support from the European Community for the necessary steps to putting into practice the stipulations of the Rec 1333/97

* (Apellu fu datu, pi limba francezã, la ma multi delegatsii parlamentari di Strasburg, la 27 di meslu Cirishearu 2000, Strasburg, di unã delegatsie ULCA (Vasile Barba, Cezar Druia, Octavia Duma, Valentin Florian, Andreea Wisosenschi); apellu fu pitricut sh-cu poshta, pi limba englezã, Strasburg, la Comisia di Culturã shi Anvitsãmintu a Consiliului Europeanu)