this one's gross too. it's linked from that page, but kinda hard to notice at first.
ANYBODY WHO SPEAKS RUSSIAN WILL BE PUNISHED
(Nezavisimaya Gazeta)
Azerbaijan launches a campaign to protect the national language.
by .Usniya Babayeva
issued on 30.04.02
The Russian language was a language of inter-ethnic communication in the former Soviet Union. As a result, large groups of people in the former Soviet republics are still using Russian as their native language. This category of Russian-speaking citizens has not had any trouble in using Russian until recently. However, the realities in the newly-independent CIS states are such that many of these Russian speakers will face
great problems if they don't learn official national languages.
The former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan is no exception. Azerbaijan has introduced new measures restricting the use of Russian in public life. For example, government officials will be fined for 50- 90 dollars for not using the Latin alphabet in clerical work. The fines for legal entities will be between 150 and 300 dollars.
A decision to switch over from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet was passed under President Ayaz Mutalibov in 1992. The late Azeri President, Abulfaz Elchibei, started the language reform but didn't finish it due to internal political instability in Azerbaijan.
Incumbent President Geidar Aliev dotted the i's. On June 18, 2001, Aliev issued a decree ordering to complete transition to the Latin alphabet in six weeks and to introduce the Azeri language in all spheres of political and public life. His decision was prompted by the then existing problems in applying, teaching and studying the Azeri language. At that time, the Russian language dominated the media, official correspondence and record keeping. Communication with foreign diplomatic missions and foreign companies and firms operating in Azerbaijan was in foreign languages.
Therefore, officials in Baku decided to undertake radical measures to protect the
national language. The cabinet of ministers was ordered to draft bills establishing responsibility for open or hidden propaganda against the Azeri language and Latin spelling.
The recent amendments to the Azeri Code of Administrative Offences under which all
people who create obstacles to the application of the state language in Azerbaijan will be punished are following from Aliev's decree.
According to Lyatif Guseinov, head of the constitutional legislation committee of the
Azeri parliament, the strengthening of positions of the state language doesn't mean discrimination against other languages spoken in Azerbaijan. The most important thing is to ensure that the state language is duly applied in all spheres of public life.
Government officials who speak or write in Russian violate Azerbaijan's constitution.
After its independence from the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan started developing its own economy and opened its borders to western businesses. The arrival of foreign companies has strengthened the positions of the English language. The language expansion can be seen in the names of local television channels - "Space", "Lider" and "Azerbaijan news service, newspapers - "Femida" and "Impulse", entertainment places, etc.
"We've been living side by side with Russia for 200 years. Over that period of time the Azeri language has borrowed five or six Russian words compared to plenty of English borrowings that have been made over the past ten years. I don't think that it's good," Azeri writer Anar, chairman of the National Writers' Union and a parliament
deputy, said. He thinks that a bill on developing and protecting the Azeri language will be submitted to the Azeri parliament soon.
Anar said that measures to strengthen the positions of the national language should not
be regarded as an offensive against the Russian language. "What's happening in Azerbaijan today is nothing more than an awkward attempt to protect our own state language," he emphasized. The writer said that Azerbaijan still had many Russian-language schools and higher educational establishments. Many newspapers and magazines, including Literary Azerbaijan, come out in Russian. There are Russian-language television and radio programs, and the Russian Drama Theatre is functioning. Anar described all discrimination charges as inconsistent. He also recalled that Russia had recently passed a new citizenship law proclaiming the knowledge of Russian as a state language to be mandatory for all citizens without exception