Dear Colleagues,

Please ask the NYTimes to correct the impression left in her readers by
publishing the Slovak Ambassador’s letter a year ago. My letter is attached
(NOT TO BE COPIED), but as a reference in writing your own letters.

Best regards: Bela Liptak
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The New York Times
229 W. 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
(Fax: 212-556-3622
e-mail: letters@nytimes.com)

To the Editor,

On 11/20/95, you published a letter of mine, in which I protested the
“language law,” which was enacted in Slovakia on 11/15/95. I wrote: “The free
world should not tolerate the use of “language police” in the middle of
Europe at the end of the 20th century.”

On 11/27/95, you published a reply by Branislav Lichardus, Ambassador of the
Slovak Republic, in which he claimed that, the law I complained about:
“governs only the use of the Slovak language. Use of the minority languages
in Slovakia will be included in a different law dedicated to this issue.”

A year has passed since that promise was made and now, on the 21st of
November, 1996, the Slovak Nationalities Council rejected the passage of that
promised minority language law. Jozef Kalman, deputy premier of Slovakia
stated that the existing legislation is sufficient and there is no need for a
separate law to govern the use of minority languages.

The “existing legislation” is the one I protested and which (it was claimed
by the Slovak Ambassador) did not apply to minority languages. In fact it
does and in fact it destroys the total educational system of the indigenous
Hungarians who became minorities, not by emigrating to Slovakia, but by
staying in their towns and villages while borders been redrawn around them.

This occurred in spite of the support for the passage of the minority
language bill by many international organizations, including the European
Union. It is now time for the United States to speak up for the collective
cultural rights of minorities and to forcefully oppose the use of language
police as a tool of forced assimilation. Therefore we should recall our
ambassador until this outrageous law is rescinded.

Bela Liptak
Stamford, CT, Nov. 25, 1996
(Tel: 203-357-7614)