SIGNS, SIGNIFIERS AND SIGNINGS

The former Yugoslavia signed and ratified the International Covenant [24] on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on 8 August 1967 and 2 June 1971, respectively. Slovenia signed by succession on 6 July 1992.

Article 7(a)(i) provides for:

"Fair wages and equal remuneration for work of equal value without distinction of any kind"

It hardly needs to be said that preventing any kind of work being undertaken other than in the language the country refuses to teach does create a distinction, and a very large one. It is the distinction, essentially, between the minimum wage or zero, or in the best case scenario, the difference between the minimum wage and the welfare allowance (€402).

It does deprive a people, namely the English-speaking people of Slovenia and their reluctant-to-teach friends and spouses, of its own means of subsistence, contrary to Article 1(2); ZJRS 14 does discriminate against the same group on the grounds of language contrary to Article 2(2) and the fact that nobody is telling anybody this and they are just crouching there, waiting to catch you out and fine you, typifies Slovenia's opportunistic official plunder.

The UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education dates back to 14 December 1960 and Slovenia notified them of its succession on 5 November 1992.

Article 1 suggests you don't deprive any person or group of access to education of any type or at any level, offer one of an inferior standard, or inflict on them "conditions which are incompatible with the dignity of man".

Which with its aforementioned hospitality Slovenia obviously has, in all three respects.

Article 3a invites the signatories to:

"abrogate any statutory provisions and any administrative instructions and to discontinue any administrative practices which involve discrimination in education;"

Those statutory provisions would be the ZJRS 14 and 32, and the administrative practices would be the Ptuj ZJRS not providing any course for the first 16 years, and then sending me to a course for Albanian ladies, a process they probably engaged in merely to pass money around and with one eye on creating some stupid statistic.

Yet the fact they had achieved some success with the Albanian ladies shows the miracle can be performed (allegedly or on paper - I didn't actually hear them speak). The Complainant notes the illogicality of arguing economics, in that there are 50 speakers of English as a first language for every Albanian speaker, and about 180 who can speak English altogether. However, an average success rate is of no utility to those not invited to succeed.

What is the difference between Albanian ladies and English men in Ptuj? Albanian ladies have nothing Slovenians want in the language department, despite Albanian's 3 to 1 advantage over Slovene with 7.5 million speakers worldwide.

What is the right size of minority to be in, to be equal? If ten or so ethnic Albanian ladies are a minority then the Complainant is an even smaller minority, about 10% of theirs, based on the abortive class.

But in the magical view, the Englishman does not belong in a minority, because of his big important language that they don't know he is not allowed to use in his search for human dignity.

The Slovenian "hospitality" towards the Albanian ladies has an integrative aim. Slovenia is too busy integrating with the Complainant to concern itself with how he will do the same.

and 3b

"To ensure, by legislation where necessary, that there is no discrimination in the admission of pupils to educational institutions"

Well we have seen the legislation discriminates, by preventing the non-Slovene-speaker from acquiring the money Slovenia thinks it deserves - around 9600 euros for Level A1 (180 hours) - to teach him or her in a paying course.

Ten months' minimum wage for the first of six levels! Slovenia must suck up the cost of its uniqueness if it wants to impose a business language and remain EU-able.

And refusing the Complainant lessons because he is not an Albanian lady, or because there are not enough of him,  obviously discriminates. Your minority is the wrong size, is meant to be a rich minority, and is somehow invisible to us, the 59%-English-using autochthons are insisting, with legal precision.

3c and 3d concern financial arrangements and by implication raise the joint-share of responsibility for the lacunae in learning availability and affordability given the ban on foreigners earning money. I have no relevant information concerning the financial relationships of the Respondents.

It appears Slovenia has the option of giving up the UNESCO Convention [25] Article 16 if it chooses - perhaps in a referendum - to carry on with its anti-English laws and administrative practices.

I suggest the Ljudska Univerza Ptuj has no responsibility for the legislation against English businesses. But obviously it did a deal with the ZJRS to teach a pupil it wasn't equipped for - and wasn't back in around 2008, when I was first told that the LUP only had Slovene courses for speakers of Hungarian, Italian or Serbo-Croat - again, languages with rather less of a following than English.

LUP has therefore maintained a steady rate of discrimination over the years. It would also be interesting to see what transpired financially after the Complainant was removed from the course. Has anyone made a profit out of not teaching various groups Slovene? If so, how much?

Other language centres are too far away, creating yet more expense. Ptuj was big enough to have a University! It had English-speaking residents! So it should have had a Slovene course for them.

But I detect no pretence at an interest in ZJRS 13. Conversely, it was decided early on in Ptuj that teaching Slovene would be disabling to a bounteous cornucopia of populist criticism.

Even fed directly from the cow, LUP was unable to present what it had contracted to do with the ZRSZ or the Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities.

ZRSZ is not responsible for the legislation but has failed to supervise the school and organise facilities. It together with the Ministry is responsible for the administrative practices from which Slovenia's discrimination emanates.

The government is entirely responsible for the legislation and therefore the treaty violations. As the boss of the ZRSZ, the Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities is responsible for the administrative practices of not sending me on a course for sixteen years, before finally sending me on a course of no utility to a person speaking the language I speak (not Albanian), which didn't exist.

3e does not really apply, as the same access to Slovene language knowledge as Slovenes would not seem to amount to very much [59]. They are inside looking out.

As the LUP class began, an odd blend of careful attention, confusion and bystander effect filled the air, until the Complainant felt it was his duty as the only man to ask teacher why she was chuntering away in a language she hadn't taught any of yet. Then a couple of others perked up and said yes, they were also wondering about that.

So all three of us were expelled for good at the first class, which anyway only lasted twenty minutes for everyone, and not the hour the taxpayer had paid for.

Slovenia talks a good game about the future. But it has already had 17 years of the Complainant's future. The damage is done.

Article 2 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities 1992:

"Persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities (hereinafter referred to as persons belonging to minorities) have the right to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, and to use their own language, in private and in public, freely and without interference or any form of discrimination.

"Persons belonging to minorities have the right to participate effectively in cultural, religious, social, economic and public life."

While in Article 4:

"Persons belonging to minorities should have adequate opportunities to gain knowledge of the society as a whole.

"States should consider appropriate measures so that persons belonging to minorities may participate fully in the economic progress and development in their country."

And Article 5 says:

"National policies and programmes shall be planned and implemented with due regard for the legitimate interests of persons belonging to minorities." [44]

Slovenia's national policies seem to have been planned and implemented with the intention of stamping out minorities, consisting, apart from the registered minority languages, of all the people who don't speak Slovene.

These English types face deliberate starvation or, if they are lucky, welfare dependency. In a further twist, welfare is  allowed on a temporary residence permit for non-EU ex-Yugo citizens, but not for EU citizens.

Slovenia managed to postpone permanent residence status for 14 years and therefore - according to the man who can't copy and paste on a computer who runs the ZZZS and wants me to bring a translator - welfare and healthcare for the Complainant, until its own citizens were granted status in the UK as part of pre-Brexit horsetrading.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was also inherited on 6 July 1992 and came into force for Slovenia on 6 October 1992, meaning that it undertakes in Article 2.1:

"to respect and to ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognized in the present Covenant, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

"2. Where not already provided for by existing legislative or other measures, each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to take the necessary steps, in accordance with its constitutional processes and with the provisions of the present Covenant, to adopt such laws or other measures as may be necessary to give effect to the rights recognized in the present Covenant.

"3. Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes:

"(a) To ensure that any person whose rights or freedoms as herein recognized are violated shall have an effective remedy, notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity;

"(b) To ensure that any person claiming such a remedy shall have his right thereto determined by competent judicial, administrative or legislative authorities, or by any other competent authority provided for by the legal system of the State, and to develop the possibilities of judicial remedy;

"(c) To ensure that the competent authorities shall enforce such remedies when granted."

In Article 4 we learn that you can slack off a bit in a national emergency, but not to the extent of discriminating against any group on language grounds.

In Article 24 we find that:

"1. Every child shall have, without any discrimination as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, national or social origin, property or birth, the right to such measures of protection as are required by his status as a minor, on the part of his family, society and the State.

and finally

"Article 27
In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to such minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practise their own religion, or to use their own language."

This is, says the preamble, all because

"the ideal of free human beings enjoying civil and political freedom and freedom from fear and want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his civil and political rights, as well as his economic, social and cultural rights." [29]

The ICCPR is a treaty demanding of its signatories that:

"In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence."

Clearly the ZJRS ban on a business activity in English deprives this prominent group of non-Slovenian speakers of the right to economic participation, so the question of opportunities is rather moot. It is a situation exacerbated by the peculiar resentments of minority language speakers confronted with a majority language speaker who is in a minority here on their territory. Who consider themselves a member of the European Union if that can means it can get some money - but not European if it means doing any non-Slovenian things.

The ICCPR offers the Englishman in Ptuj the right of self-determination.

"By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development."

says Article 1.

The Helsinki Final Act (or Helsinki Accord) of 1975 suggests:

"The participating States will respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.

and the parties agreed

"to ensure equality of rights between migrant workers and nationals of the host countries with regard to conditions of employment"

Taking "employment" to include "self-employment" - really one of the most likely ways to be employed - ZJRS 14 states categorically that non-Slovene speakers do not have an equal right.

"They will promote and encourage the effective exercise of civil, political, economic, social, cultural and other rights and freedoms all of which derive from the inherent dignity of the human person and are essential for his free and full development."

The signatories including Harold Wilson and Josip Broz Tito were asked

"to regard with favour the provision of vocational training to migrant workers and, as far as possible, free instruction in the language of the host country, in the framework of their employment"

Signatories agree to promote works in the sphere of literature and the arts including by

"encouraging competent organizations and relevant firms to conclude agreements and contracts and contributing, by this means, to a gradual increase in the number and diversity of works by authors from the other participating States available in the original and in translation in their libraries and bookshops;

"promoting, where deemed appropriate, an increase in the number of sales outlets where books by authors from the other participating States, imported in the original on the basis of agreements and contracts, and in translation, are for sale; promoting, on a wider scale, the translation of works in the sphere of literature and other fields of cultural activity, produced in the languages of the other participating States, especially from the less widely-spoken languages, and the publication and dissemination of the translated works by such measures as:

"encouraging more regular contacts between interested publishing houses;

"developing their efforts in the basic and advanced training of translators;

"encouraging, by appropriate means, the publishing houses of their countries to publish translations;

"facilitating the exchange between publishers and interested institutions of lists of books which might be translated;

"promoting between their countries the professional activity and co-operation of translators;

"carrying out joint studies on ways of further promoting translations and their dissemination"

...and seek ways inter alia

"- to contribute by appropriate means to the wider use of the mass media in order to improve mutual acquaintance with the cultural life of each;

"- to seek to develop the necessary conditions for migrant workers and their families to preserve their links with their national culture, and also to adapt themselves to their new cultural environment;

"- to encourage the competent bodies and enterprises to make a wider choice and effect wider distribution of full-length and documentary films from the other participating States, and to promote more frequent non-commercial showings, such as premières, film weeks and festivals, giving due consideration to films from countries whose cinematographic works are
less well known;

"- to promote, by appropriate means, the extension of opportunities for specialists from the other participating States to work with materials of a cultural character from film and audio-visual archives, within the framework of the existing rules for work on such archival materials"

...all of which are areas the Complainant would be competent to work in without Slovene, and more so with it.

However the Accords did not have binding treaty status.

Fun Fact: the then People's Republic of Albania refused to participate in the Accords.

There was no internet in 1975.

See also the Concluding Document - Vienna 1986, items 11, 13, 14, 18, 19, 26 under Questions Relating to Security in Europe, and items 58, 59, and 63 under Cooperation in Humanitarian and Other Fields. [31]