In school policemen pitted against Young Front activist

In order to prevent the leader of Salihorsk branch of the Young Front Ivan Shyla from passing the final exam, a police guard was sent to his school.

“Today mourning I have come to school to sit for an examination. However, I was said I can’t sit for an exam. Police was in the school building just in case I put up a fight,” Ivan Shyla said to Radio Svaboda. “Nobody had warned me about my expulsion in a written form. It was oral information. I have been handed in a resolution on my expulsion. They refer to the Statute of the school and to laws. They say the last straw was the detention with stickers on May 30 (when school exams started). Another reason was my attendance of the presentation of the book “Thirst for spring”. Pictures of it were published on the web. Officials from Minsk were displeased by that”.

“At the moment I am at school. All people in the school, all teachers, even those who voted for expulsion, understand me. A carpenter of our school, whom I do not even know, shakes my hand and says words of support. The reaction of all teachers who talked to me is almost the same,” the young man says.

As we have informed, officials of the local city executive committee and Minsk regional officials ordered to expel him. The schoolmaster Volha Syankova quitted the job as a sign of protest, and her assistant was dismissed for unsatisfactory educational work.

As said by the boy, on June 2 the teachers’ council studied the issue of Ivan Shyla. It was proposed not to give a school-leaving certificate to him, and to expel the local Young Front leader from school. All teachers voted unanimously to allow him to sit for the last exam and to get the school0leaving certificate.

But on Tuesday the situation changed. An extraordinary teachers’ council adopted a decision to expel the boy from the school. Ivan Shyla and his parents haven’t been officially explained the reason yet. An unprecedented incident has taken place. The school leaver with brilliant performance, who had been allowed to take examinations, was expelled a day before the last exam.