Parents of Salihorsk School Students Receive Fines

19.11.2006.

Ivan Shyla, student of Salihorsk secondary school #4, and his friends Zmitser Baranouski and Andrei Tychyna are under age. That’s why the juvenile commission which considered the charges against them, punished their parents, reports RFE/RL. Every family received a fine of 93,000 BYR (about 45 USD).

The teenagers were detained in the school building on October 20.

According to Ivan Shyla, everything happened before the teachers’ eyes:

-- The fact that Andrei Tychyna touched the floor with the flag became the ground to call for police and detain us.

Ivan Shyla says, that was not the only Lukashenka state flag which the guys had seized:

-- On the 3^rd of July they hang the flags all over the country. We carried out a special operation – we took down dozens of them.

Ivan’s 13-year-old brother Illa is a student of school # 4. During the last couple of years the police detained Shyla brothers dozens of times. Ivan Shyla speaks about their effect on the school statistics with irony:

The crime level grew by 400 per cent this year. Only due to my brother and me.

Mikhail Amelyanchuk, head of the district administration expressed his opinion:

-- One has to apply for permission 15 days before the action. If you don’t – you will sit in a cage. Got it?

The conversation took place in June, when Ivan Shyla and other youth activists went on hunger strike against persecution of unregistered youth organization Young Front and in support of Belarusian political prisoners.