Ufa students are prohibited from participating in opposition rallies

The head of the Ufa campaign headquarters of Alexei Navalny, Lilia Chanysheva, told Kommersant about messages coming to the headquarters from students of the Ufa College of Industry Technologies, the School of Arts, and the Ufa State Oil University (UGNTU) about a ban on participating in opposition rallies.

Students of the Ufa College of Industrial Technologies told the publication that on April 24 a meeting was held at which "everyone was warned about the inadmissibility of going to Navalny's rallies."

At the college itself, they confirmed to Kommersant that they were holding "meetings and class hours for rallies, as planned."

A student of the School of Arts said that "it is forbidden to go to Navalny's rallies at talks held in the classroom."

“Especially active work is carried out among junior students. For example, they are forbidden to wear badges from Navalny’s headquarters, they are forced to remove stickers from their phones that mention his name, and they are warned in advance not to go to rallies in June. All this under pain of exclusion,” he said.

However, the director of the art school, Vladimir Belov, called the information received from the students "complete nonsense and stupidity."

At the Ufa State Oil University, according to Navalny's head of staff Chanysheva, teachers were gathered and recommended to dissuade students from going to rallies.

“The headman of one of the groups circulated a warning on the VKontakte network that participation in Navalny’s rally would be followed by expulsion without the right to be reinstated,” Chanysheva said. The headman himself told Kommersant that he acted “not on command, but on his own initiative, in order to warn that there are riots at rallies for which they face expulsion.”

Navalny's headquarters plans to appeal to Ufa prosecutor Vladlen Mikhailenko with a request to check reports of threats and pressure on students. “We consider this a violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, the law on meetings and rallies, and the Law on Education,” she said.

The administration of the republic said that they are dealing with messages from social networks. “There was no such team and cannot be. But we understand that the educational process is carried out in the forms prescribed by law. The activities of political parties and individual politicians in universities and colleges are not provided for by the curriculum,” the administration noted.

The Commissioner for Student Rights in Bashkiria, Alina Safuanova, a student at Bashkir State University, said that there were no complaints from students about pressure from teachers.