Press Release on International Mother-Language Day 2026

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New York February 21, 2026

“Multilingualism Is Not Erasure”: Justice For All Warns Language Suppression Fuels Cultural and Religious Genocide on International Mother Language Day 2026

On International Mother Language Day 2026, Justice For All, a U.S.-based human rights organization accredited to the United Nations, calls on the international community to recognize a fundamental truth: when a language is destroyed, a people’s faith, memory, and freedom are destroyed with it.

Under this year’s theme, “Youth Voices on Multilingual Education,” the global community celebrates linguistic diversity. Yet for persecuted minorities, including Indigenous First Nations and Native Americans, Bosniaks, Rohingya, Kashmiris, and Uyghurs, language suppression is not accidental neglect. It is policy! It is a deliberate strategy of cultural erasure that undermines religious freedom, community continuity, and the right to self-determination.

“Language is the architecture of the human soul,” said Imam Malik Mujahid, President of Justice For All. “When a state suppresses a mother tongue, it is not promoting unity, it is enforcing erasure. Multilingualism must mean protection, not assimilation.”

A United Nations report, Education, Language and the Human Rights of Minorities (A/HRC/43/47), affirms that language discrimination lies at the heart of exclusion and conflict, and that states may be required to communicate with minorities in their own languages where reasonable and justified.

First Nations and Native Americans: Boarding Schools and Broken Tongues

Across Turtle Island (United States and Canada), Indigenous languages were not lost by accident; they were targeted through state policy. Federal authorities and church-run boarding schools sought to “kill the Indian, save the man” by forcibly separating Native children from their families and prohibiting them from speaking their mother tongues.

At U.S. federal Indian boarding schools and Canada’s Residential School system, children from Nations including Lakota, Navajo (Diné), Cherokee, Ojibwe, and many others were punished for speaking their languages. Sacred songs were silenced. Ceremonies were outlawed. Spiritual leaders were criminalized. Language suppression functioned as a vehicle for forced assimilation, land dispossession, and cultural destruction.

Today, many of the hundreds of Indigenous languages once spoken across North America are critically endangered. For numerous First Nations, prayers, origin stories, and sacred ecological knowledge are encoded in language itself. Translation cannot fully carry the theology embedded in Indigenous grammar, metaphor, and worldview.

While initiatives such as the UN International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022–2032) represent important recognition, restoration requires sustained funding for immersion schools, protection of land-based spiritual practice, and survivor-informed healing programs addressing the legacy of boarding schools.

Bosnia: Language Denial and Genocide

Even before the 1992–1995 genocide in Bosnia, the Bosnian language and literature were subjected to politicized denial and marginalization. Efforts to deny the name “Bosnian language” and resist its recognition in schools functioned as tools of exclusion.

The destruction of the National Library in Sarajevo, the burning of Islamic manuscripts, and the demolition of historic Masjids (Mosques) represented not only attacks on buildings, but on memory. The 1995 Srebrenica genocide, in which over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were executed, stands as a grim reminder that cultural erasure and physical annihilation are often intertwined.

Language in Bosnia carries centuries of Islamic scholarship, Sufi poetry, and sevdalinka tradition. Attempts to fragment or deny the Bosnian language are not neutral linguistic debates; they are political acts linked to genocide denial and identity erasure. Reconciliation cannot be achieved while linguistic denial persists.

Rohingya: Erasing Identity by Erasing Words

Since the 2017 genocide in Myanmar, Rohingya language and identity have been systematically targeted. The term “Rohingya” itself has been banned. History, literature, and culture are excluded from official education.

In refugee camps in Bangladesh, Rohingya children are primarily educated in Burmese or Bengali, accelerating linguistic dilution and weakening future claims to identity and citizenship.

Hena Zuberi of Justice For All’s Burma Task Force stated: “The Myanmar military did not only burn villages; it sought to burn language and memory. Protecting the Rohingya language is inseparable from protecting their right to safe return and full rights.”

Kashmir: Marginalizing Koshur

In Kashmir, the Kashmiri language (Koshur) faces systemic marginalization in education and administration, largely replaced by Urdu and English. This displacement weakens the transmission of centuries-old Islamic and Sufi traditions rooted in Kashmiri poetry and devotional literature.

Imam Dr. Abdel Jabar, Director of Justice For All’s Kashmir Action, noted: “When a child is taught their mother tongue is inferior, they internalize that their heritage and their faith tradition is disposable. Linguistic erosion in Kashmir is a political choice that narrows the space for cultural and religious self-expression.”

Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects minorities’ rights to use their own language. These guarantees must be meaningfully implemented.

India: Relegating Urdu to obscurity

India is home to the 2nd largest population of Muslims, around 18% of the total population. Urdu is considered the language of most of India’s Muslims. While Indian Muslims speak Hindi as well as the languages local to the states they live in, Urdu was always seen as a language bond between them. Unfortunately, there has been a concerted effort in many Indian states to completely push Urdu to the background, breaking the language bond between Muslims of disparate areas of the country. Most notable is the largest state in India, Uttar Pradesh, where it is now illegal to establish any new Urdu medium schools.

Zahir Adil, lead of Justice For All’s Save India From Fascism campaign stated:

“The erasure of Urdu is done at multiple levels. Urdu schools are increasingly difficult to establish,and Urdu is often used in Indian cinema but is presented instead as Hindi. The words are Urdu but given a new identity. The Indian majority population must accept that Urdu is an Indian language, it existed much before Pakistan. Urdu and Hindi are inseparable, and despite all efforts to erase it, Urdu remnants will always be noticed within the Hindi+Urdu mix that is spoken by a large number of Indians.”

Uyghurs: Criminalizing Language and Faith

For Uyghurs in East Turkistan/Xinjiang, language suppression is intertwined with mass detention, forced labor, religious persecution, and forced assimilation. Uyghur-language instruction has been systematically replaced by Mandarin in schools. Writers, scholars, and religious leaders preserving Uyghur linguistic and theological traditions have been imprisoned or disappeared.

Arsalan Hidayat, Team Lead of Justice For All’s Free Uyghur Campaign, stated: “When you criminalize a people’s language, you criminalize their prayers, scholarship, and ability to transmit faith and culture to the next generation. Linguistic erasure is strategic.”

Language preservation for Uyghurs is central to religious freedom, family unity, and survival.

Binding Legal Obligations and the Youth Mandate

The weaponization of language violates multiple international instruments, including the ICCPR, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education, the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Minorities.

With 2026 focused on youth voices, Justice For All urges governments and UN agencies to ensure young people can learn, create, and worship in their mother tongues—both offline and online.

Imam Saffet Catovic, Director of UN Operations for Justice For All, stated: “We do not lack legal frameworks; we lack political will. If youth voices matter, they must be heard in the languages of their ancestors, not only in the languages of their oppressors.”

Call to Action

Justice For All calls on Member States, UN agencies, and civil society to:

-Implement recommendations of the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues

-Guarantee multilingual education for Rohingya children in refugee camps

-Protect and institutionalize Kashmiri (Koshur) in education and administration

-End suppression of Uyghur language and religious expression

-Fully fund Indigenous language revitalization initiatives in North America

-Ensure full recognition and protection of the Bosnian language in all educational and governmental institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Let multilingualism mean protection, not erasure. Let International Mother Language Day be more than a celebration: let it be a commitment to survival.

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Let those words resonate in every mother tongue.