A passport minus its Russian page
Lviv-based Sviatoslav Litynsky got this decision made about his own document, but this is not the end of the story“Hurrah! The court satisfied my claim to be given a passport in Ukrainian only!” This is how Sviatoslav Litynsky, Senior Lecturer at the Programming Department of Lviv National Ivan Franko University, reacted so emotionally on his Facebook page to the permission of the Lviv District Administrative Court to withdraw the Russian-language page from his internal passport.
The story began on September 8, when Litynsky requested the Lviv’s Frankivsky District Department of the State Migration Service to issue him a passport “in the Ukrainian language only or, if possible, also in English.”
As the State Migration Service refused to do so, referring to the law in force, Litynsky filed and won a lawsuit. “The administrative suit should be fully satisfied,” Judge M. Kedyk said, reading out the decision. “The court rules that the Main Directorate of the State Migration Service of Ukraine in Lviv oblast issue Sviatoslav Litynsky a passport of a citizen of Ukraine executed in the Ukrainian language.”
As Svitlana Khytrova, spokesperson of the Main Directorate of the State Migration Service of Ukraine in Lviv oblast, told The Day, this kind of a judicial ruling is subject to appeal. “Only the decision of an appeal court will put an end to this case,” Khytrova says and insists that Litynsky should have first turned to lawmakers. “The migration service will not be able to fulfill this decision because the law provides for no mechanism to do so,” she says.
Meanwhile, Litynsky promises to request the Cabinet of Ministers “to adopt a resolution on how the Ukrainian passport should look like in accordance with the law.”
It will be recalled that it is not first legal action of the Lviv University lecturer about the use of the Russian language. In February 2013 Litynsky sued the company Samsung for compensation because there was no Ukrainian-language marking on the washing machine he had bought in an Internet shop. He lost that case, but he won this time.
Litynsky himself does not at all consider his action as protest. “I don’t want to draw attention, I want to defend my rights,” he says to The Day’s correspondent. He considers his actions as “initiative from below.”
As for the State Migration Service appeal against the court ruling, Litynsky says he is very much surprised with the migration service’s attitude. “Instead of appealing, they’d better write to the Cabinet, for passports continue to be issued for a second year contrary to the law in force. They’d rather write at least one report instead of fighting with me,” he says.
Litynsky also says he receives active support from his students. Moreover, they turn to him for help. “They had problems with water supply in the dormitory, so I advised them where to turn to. And the water began to run!” he notes. Now he says he will focus on the quality of roads – it is about altering the road repair law. “It’s my hobby,” Sviatoslav says smiling.
