ABSTRACT: In Resolution 11.11 of 8 Novemeber 1985, the General Conference of UNESCO, acknowledging the great potential of Esperanto for international comprehension and communication between peoples, invited the 160 member states to promote the introduction of school courses on linguistic problems and Esperanto.
Why has this Resolution been ignored and, above all, why has this invitation been turned down by all the countries of the European Community, which has a great need for transnational communication?
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During the course of the first session of the XXXVI Congress of the Radical Party, the following people joined the Party: from Italy, Andrea Chiti Batelli, Esperantist, secretary of the Italian parliamentary delegations to the European Parliament for over twenty years, a member since 1944 of the "European Federalist Movement"; from the Netherlands, Hans Erasmus, currently program director of the EEC Commission on the Environment, Dutch representative of the "European Esperantist Union (E.E.U.) and deviser of the "Project for Communication in the European Community".
We invite both individual Esperantists and Esperanto Associations to join the Radical Party: for them, the Party offers itself as a instrument in the political battle to raise the problem of linguistic communication and support the idea of a democratic international language, in Europe and in the rest of the world.
(THE PARTY new - N. 7 - May 1992)
Until now, the linguistic policies of the EEC organisms, with the aim of achieving communication amongst European peoples, has been based on the following objectives:
"mass polyglottism", as if this were possible for everyone, whilst in actual fact even university professors and high-ranking figures are not capable of such a feat, and usually speak only one second language, generally English;
"linguistic diversification", in the sense that different languages should be taught on the basis of the areas and countries of origin - in actual fact the vast majority of parents want their children to learn English, which remains the only foreign language they study;
"inter-European communication by means of such diversification", as if the opposite were not glaringly true: if everyone learnt three or four languages, this would prevent communication, even in the improbable event that people could achieve such an aim. This objective, what's more, will seem even more ludicrous when the Eastern European countries eventually become involved in the process of unification;
"the acquisition on the part of everyone of an international cultural awareness", as if the ability to stammer a few sentences in one or two foreign languages would serve this purpose. In actual fact much deeper knowledge is necessary, and this will inevitably remain within the reach of a privileged few;
"the relativization of one's own national culture", as if a superficial and practical knowledge of a foreign language were enough to understand the culture of the people who speak it.
As a consequence, the problem of European and international communication has not been solved and will not be solved, not even partially. It has simply been avoided, and the unconfessed result is that the failure of the impossible objectives proposed has left the way clear for English - and as there are no alternatives to English, this represents the death, or the murder, of the variety and wealth of European cultures and languages.
Are the European institutions aware of what is really happening? Linguistic democracy, the right to language and to an international language, is vital for the fate of European democracy and is the herald of European union. Why do the Commission and the Parliament of the European Community, and the Council of Europe, not take note of the failure of the linguistic policies they have pursued so far, and of the UNESCO Resolution of 1985, and turn to the Esperanto option, in particular for its potential as a preparatory subject for the teaching of foreign languages?
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Emiljia Lapenna, Croatian, for many years a leading figure in the international Esperantist Movement, the founder in 1945 of the "Kroatia Esperanto Ligo" ("Croatia Esperantist League"). Upon joining the Radical Party she sent us the following message: "When I received the invitation in the Esperanto edition of the newspaper to enrol in the transnational Radical Party, I didn't have to think twice. Having been an Esperantist for fifty years, I was obviously happy to join the only Party which devotes attention to Esperanto, to the linguistic discrimation which exists, although unnoticed, all over the world.
It is possible to improve the unhappy situation of the world - and I live in one of the most tragic areas, plagued by war - through internationalism, not through the Esperantist neutralism which all too often is seen as indifference. I hope that many Esperantists will finally understand this."
