DISINFO: Crimea is a result of the ban on the Russian language
SUMMARY
Crimea is a result of the ban on the Russian language. The Donbas unrest is a result of the ban on the Russian language. If you deprive a people of its language, you strip it of a right to identify itself as a people. It is a linguistic genocide.
RESPONSE
Ukraine has never banned Russian language. Prior to the May 2014 Presidential elections, acting President Turchynov refused to sign legislation repealing the language law of 2012, which allows the use of the Russian language for official purposes at regional level. Human rights missions that travelled to Ukraine in 2014 did not find evidence that the Russian minority would have been in danger: 1. The Advisory Committee’s Ad hoc Report on the situation of national minorities in Ukraine, adopted on 1 April 2014, Council of Europe; 2. Report on the human rights situation in Ukraine, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 15 June 2014; 3. Statement by the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities on her Recent Visit to Ukraine, 4 April 2014 The word genocide is frequently used in pro-Kremlin disinformation https://euvsdisinfo.eu/disinformation-cases/?text=genocide&disinfo_issue=&disinfo_language%5B%5D=rus&date=, but it seldom corresponds to the actual definition of a genocide http://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.html More on background of the new Ukrainian law on education and the controversies it has raised http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/73272. Ukraine will forward the respective parts of the Law to the Council of Europe for opinion. http://mfa.gov.ua/en/press-center/news/60121-statement-on-the-law-of-ukraine-on-education