Two members of the European Parliament from Finland directed a letter to the authorities of the Perm Krai and Suksun District in which they expressed concern about the liquidation of the Vaskino school. Heidi Hautala, chairperson of the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament and MEP Satu Hassi wrote the following:
Dear Recipient,
We would like to express our deepest concern regarding to closing the only school in the Perm region where Mari language has been taught. Closing the Vasinsko primary school will deny the Perm Maris their linguistic rights which can impede preserving Maris’ indigenous language and culture.
We would like to kindly remind You that the International Human Rights Law sets standards for linguistic rights and for the protection of the identity of linguistic minority groups such as Maris. We appeal to You to preserve the Vasinsko primary school and do everything in Your power to protect Maris’ language and culture.
Best regards,
Heidi Hautala
Member of the European Parliament
Chair of the of the Subcommittee on Human Rights at the European Parliament
heidi.hautala@europarl.europa.eu
Satu Hassi
Member of the European Parliament
satu.hassi@europarl.europa.eu
Text of the letter provided by Henna Hakkarainen
Picture: HS.fi: Satu Hassi and Heidi Hautala
MariUver 
We, that is Vox Humanitatis (http://www.voxhumanitatis.org) care about education in ones mother tongue. Therefore we try to co-operate as much as possible with local communities to create technological support for their language and also contents for free educational software. UNESCO strongly supports education in mother languages, because this is how identiy and knowledge of the specific cultures can be maintained for the future generations. Learning in the own mother language is a Human Right. As an official document we also have the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights which you can download as a PDF-file from the link below.
We strongly agree with the letter by Heidi Hautala and Satu Hassi and thank them for their immediate response to the threat of the school closure. Furthermore we invite you, who are reading this post to express your agreeing to the preservation of the Vasinsko primary school and to the protection of the Mari language and culture.
Thank you for your time!
Bina (Sabine Emmy Eller)
CCO at Vox Humanitatis
http://www.voxhumanitatis.org
contact: bina [at] voxhumanitatis [dot] org
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Link to the pdf of the Universal Declaration of Liguistic Rights:
Click to access eng-UniversalDeclarationOfLinguisticRights.pdf
At least I know now whom to vote in the next election :->
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