Plataforma per la Llengua made its contribution at the UN Forum on Minority Issues, held at the Palais des Nations in Geneva (Switzerland), on Friday, 29 November, calling on the United Nations to act to stop hate speech against Catalan-speakers, especially on social media. The organisation deplored the wave of internet hate suffered by footballer Aitana Bonmatí for speaking in Catalan at the Ballon d'Or ceremony, and recalled that this is not an isolated case. The organisation urged the Forum to call on governments and technology platforms to protect language diversity and punish hate speech.
In her speech to the Forum, Maria de Lluc Muñoz, Plataforma per la Llengua's officer responsible for international affairs, asked the UN rapporteur for minorities, Nicolas Levrat, to ensure that minority languages and cultures receive the recognition and respect they deserve. Plataforma stressed the need for effective mechanisms to detect, address and prevent hate speech against language diversity, especially on social media, in order to achieve this, and called for the promotion of multilingual content and the creation of safe spaces for minority cultures. Plataforma per la Llengua wants both governments and platforms to support investigations, prosecutions and sanctions against hate speech online and in other media.
As a representative of the organisation, Muñoz recalled that the Spanish nationalist discourse often includes hate speech against Catalan-speakers and the Catalan language, and that this hate speech advocates imposing the language and identity of the majority on the minorities, denying them the right to a different identity of their own. From this point of view, instead of being respected, protected and promoted, minority languages such as Catalan are often rejected as "insignificant" and "impractical". Language discrimination, as the Council of Europe's European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) has stated, constitutes a form of both direct and indirect racism.
17th session of the Forum on Minority Issues
The Forum on Minority Issues is organised every year and is intended to promote dialogue and cooperation on issues relating to national, ethnic, religious and language minorities, as well collecting proposals to improve the international protection of these communities. This year's session served to deepen representations of national, ethnic, religious and language minorities in public life, education, the media and culture, as well as the participation of these minorities to create these discourses. As well as Plataforma per la Llengua, Omar Zniber, president of the UN Human Rights Council; Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; and Nicolas Levrat, the UN rapporteur for minorities, all took part. In addition, the Forum was also attended by Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones and Davyth Hicks, president and general secretary of the European Language Equality Network (ELEN), a European organization of which Plataforma per la Llengua is a part. Nicolas Levrat will summarise the contributions made by all the organisations in a set of demands and recommendations which he will present to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
