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  • Olga Shparaga urged to report on threats of dismissal and pressure from trade unions

    February 04, 2021

    Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya's representative for education Olga Shparaga and her team collected all cases of repression of students and teachers over the past week and urged to address them in case of pressure from sides of the management.

    Throughout the past week, the Belarusian regime exerted targeted pressure on the education sector and its participants. On January 26, the trial began against Artsiom Vinakurav, a student of BSUIR, who on October 26 got into a dispute with the dean about the rights of students to strike (and got on the video). On January 29, judge Marina Fedorova sentenced Artsiom Vinakurav to three years of freedom restriction and sent him to an open-type correctional institution. The student was released in the courtroom on his own recognizance.

    Witnesses of the prosecution at Vinakurav's trial included teachers of BSUIR — Yulia Litvinouskaya and Yauhen Alekhnovich, who declared that “such people should be imprisoned.” However, other teachers of BSUIR, such as Vasil Miatelski, showed solidarity with Artsiom Vinakurav.

    Another student of BSUIR, Yan Salanovich, who was sentenced to 114 days of arrest under 8 administrative protocols, was suddenly released, but he was expelled from the university the day before. During his 85 days in prison, not a single letter came from Yan, and he never saw a lawyer.

    BSU student Ilya Trakhtenberg, detained on “Black Student Thursday” on November 12, 2020, was refused by the Partizansky District Court and the Minsk City Court to change his detention to house arrest.

    On January 27, sapper and pyrotechnic groups arrived at the buildings of the BSU and the MSLU together with police officers since they received information that the buildings were mined. But then it became known that the Head of the Council of the Republic of the National Assembly Natalia Kachanava and Minister of Education Ihar Karpenka visited MSLU to take part in the expanded meeting of the Presidium of the Council of the Republic, “devoted to the discussion of the formation of civic consciousness and patriotism among student youth.” All uninvited were removed from the building, photographing was prohibited.

    On January 29, Lukashenka arrived at BSU for a “meeting with students”: students sat at this meeting with passports laid out on tables. In parallel to this visit, Sviatlana Volchek, a teacher and coordinator of the BSU strike committee, who was dismissed from the BSU in September, Paval Petrov and Olga Kavaleuskaya, acting teachers of BSU, and Mikhail Volchek, a member of the BSU strike committee, were detained and ended up in prison.   

    Throughout the week, the Belarusian regime, through the pro-government trade union, put pressure on school and kindergarten teachers, persuading or forcing them with threats of dismissal to sign an “Open Letter”, which condemned the imposition of economic sanctions by the European Union against a number of Belarusian enterprises, which once again confirms the effectiveness of these EU measures.

    With this persecution and pressure, we express our sincere solidarity with all those who continue to fight for their legitimate civil and academic rights. We urge not to go to an agreement with the illegitimate and criminal Belarusian regime. We believe that the most important way to fight for your rights is to expand the network of solidarity, find and strengthen ways of communication and mutual support. They must show that we are not alone, that Belarusians fighting for their freedoms and legal rights are the real majority.

    We would also like to draw your attention to the fact that you can personally and directly contact the ILO ([email protected]) about your disagreement with the fraudulent method of collecting signatures and with an attempt to misinform the International Labor Organization about the situation in Belarus through “Open Letters” and report pressure and threats of dismissal in case of refusal. We encourage you to do so.

    The Honest People in the @zavod_by_bot chatbot initiative also collects information from government agencies' employees about the compulsion to sign a letter. Only together and in solidarity can we regain our voices, freedom and legal rights.
     

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