Editing Belarusian language (section)

===Discrimination against Belarusian speakers===
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| quote = "People who speak Belarusian cannot do anything, because nothing great can be expressed in Belarusian. The Belarusian language is a poor language. There are only two great languages in the world: Russian and English."
| author = — [[Alexander Lukashenko]] in 2006.<ref name="Tsurkan"/>
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[[File:BelarusHomeLanguages2009rural.PNG|thumb|According to the 2009 Belarusian census data, Belarusian (marked in green) was named as the home language by respondees in most of the rural areas of Belarus<ref name="2009census">{{cite web |title=Belarus – Population Census 2009 |url=https://catalog.ihsn.org/catalog/4377/study-description |website=International Household Survey Network}}</ref>]]
Under president [[Alexander Lukashenko]], Belarusian speaking people in Belarus have complained about the discrimination against the Belarusian language in Belarus.<ref name="us2008">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O5rs8UkMj64C&q=discrimination+belarusian+language&pg=PA1163 |title=Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2007 |publisher=House, Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations – 2008 |year=2008 |isbn=9780160813993 |page=1163 |access-date=29 November 2017}}</ref> Despite a formally equal status of Russian and Belarusian, Russian is primarily used by the Belarusian government, and cases of discrimination against the Belarusian language are not rare, even though the discrimination is not institutionalized. Authorities occasionally make minor concessions to demands for a widening of the usage of the Belarusian language.<ref name="us2008" />

Organisations promoting Belarusian language such as the [[Francišak Skaryna Belarusian Language Society]] were reported as being the object of attacks by Belarus-based [[Neo-Nazism in Russia|Russian neo-Nazi groups]] in the 1990s and 2000s.<ref name="us2008" />

The Frantsishak Skaryna Society has reported about the following categories of violations against the rights of Belarusian speakers in Belarus:<ref>{{cite web |date=3 April 2012 |title=A review of language policy in Belarus |url=http://tbm-mova.by/monitoring15.html?lang=en |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201033251/http://tbm-mova.by/monitoring15.html?lang=en |archive-date=1 December 2017 |access-date=29 November 2017 |publisher=[[Frantsishak Skaryna Belarusian Language Society]]}}</ref>

* The right to receive public and private services in the Belarusian language;
* The right to access legislation in the Belarusian language;
* The right to receive education in the Belarusian language;
* The right to an equitable presence of the Belarusian language in the media;
* The right to receive full oral and written information in the Belarusian language on the products and services proposed by commercial companies.

Belarusian speakers are facing numerous obstacles when trying to arrange Belarusian language education for their children.<ref>{{cite web |date=19 January 2015 |title=Parents of Belarusian-language pupils in Baranavichy petition Prosecutor General over discrimination |url=http://spring96.org/en/news/75147 |access-date=29 November 2017 |publisher=Viasna Human Rights Center}}</ref> {{As of | 2016}} there are no Belarusian-language universities in the country.<ref name="Brli2010" />

In its 2016 report on human rights in Belarus, the US State Department also stated that there was "discrimination against ... those who sought to use the Belarusian language."<ref name="statedep2016">{{cite web |year=2017 |title=Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2016 |url=https://2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm?year=2016&dlid=265398#wrapper |access-date=27 November 2017 |publisher=US Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor}}</ref> "Because the government viewed many proponents of the Belarusian language as political opponents, authorities continued to harass and intimidate academic and cultural groups that sought to promote Belarusian and routinely rejected proposals to widen use of the language,".<ref name="statedep2016" />