Student are threatened to be punished for a complaint to media

The students of Saligorsk state mountain and chemical college risk to be punished for their letter to the hot line of a Belarusian web-site.

Last week on the TUT.by web-site a piece of information was published about students from Saligorsk, who started freezing in class because of the absence of heating in the college’s classrooms. “It is impossible to study!” - the students concluded in their letter. Following TUT.by the information about low temperatures in the classrooms of Saligorsk state mountain and chemical college was published by local media and a number of media with nation-wide coverage.  After such publicity the heating was turned on the college, the human rights center Viasna reports.

However, as the local human rights activists found out, the story did not end there. Now the administration of the educational institution is looking for the students, who sent the complaint to the web-site’s hot line in order to punish them for such a deed. In the opinion of the students themselves, the college’s administration got used to the practice of everyone humiliating themselves before them and doing whatever they are required to. But this time students went against the rules that is why they got worried in the administration. They realized that with another convenient occasion the youth will again address media for help, and started looking for the guilty ones.