ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
November 30, 2004 Tuesday

78 nationalities represented at congress in Moscow

By Olga Kostromina, Yelena Dorofeyeva

MOSCOW

The second congress of the Union of Diasporas in Russia opened in
Moscow on Tuesday. The delegates suggested forming a public chamber
of nationalities.

“We are concerned that ethnic minorities are not represented in
federal agencies,” Union President Vartan Mushegyan told Itar-Tass.
“The public body, which may be established under the Federation
Council, will protect the rights and interests of small peoples and
ethnic groups,” he said.

Seventy-eight nationalities sent their delegates to the congress,
including the Georgian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Tajik, Korean,
Kurdish, Assyrian, Chinese and Talysh communities, Mushegyan said. He
said heads of leagues of small peoples and ethnic groups of north and
south Russia had also come to attend the congress.

Deputy Secretary General of the League of Northern Peoples Yuri
Timokhin told Itar-Tass the League is made up of representatives of
30 peoples, whose total strength is 200,000. The largest ethnic group
is Nenets (34,000), while only several dozens of ethnic Yukagir are
left.

The demographic crisis, the nationalities policy and problems of
migrants will be discussed at the forum. The League of Northern
Peoples wants to discuss “the release of textbooks in the languages
of small peoples and preservation of folk medicine, which is the way
of their survival,” Timokhin said. “We are also concerned about
difficulties in the translation of literature of small peoples into
the Russian language. For instance, Ohio University has recently
translated several works of the kind into English, but Russia does
not show any interest in literature of northern peoples.”

A new media project will be announced at the forum. The TV Rainbow
program will be launched on television in 2005 to give information
about small peoples.