In Finland, parents of students at a Finnish-Russian school in the east of the country have complained to the police over media reports that the school allegedly poses a threat to national security for the entire country. This was reported on October 7 by the Finnish television company Yle .
School principal Katri Anttila said that parents of students were outraged by an article in the Finnish newspaper Iltalehti, which cited an unnamed source as citing a threat emanating from the school.
In particular, the father of a nine-year-old boy asked how he could understand that his son was now being called a Russian agent. The principal emphasized that readers of the article could mistakenly think that their school was “some kind of Russian.”
“We constantly emphasize: we are not a Russian school, we are a Finnish international school where teaching is conducted in Finnish and where Russian is studied – because it is extremely important that children learn other languages besides English,” she noted.
The principal added that because of the unfounded allegations, some parents had gone to the police themselves, as the school could not do so on its own behalf. The police were asked to launch an investigation with the Public Speech Council (JSN, a journalism watchdog) into the invasion of privacy.
Earlier, on September 30, the Children’s Ombudsman of Uzbekistan, Surayo Rakhmonova, said that law enforcement officers would check information about alleged beatings of Russian-speaking schoolchildren who do not speak the national language in one of the schools in the city of Jizzakh. On the same day, the Department of Preschool and School Education of the Jizzakh Region of Uzbekistan conducted an investigation, reporting that the conflict occurred due to misunderstanding , and not the incitement of ethnic hatred.
Before this, a video was distributed in the media showing a teacher in Uzbekistan beating up a Russian-speaking schoolboy during a lesson. The incident occurred after the boy asked to switch from Uzbek to Russian. The victim’s parents filed a complaint with the police. On September 29, a court in Tashkent fined the school teacher . 44-year-old Ozoda Ravshanova was found guilty of causing minor bodily harm and insults and will have to pay 6.8 million soums ($534).