The officer who requested data of schoolchildren of "Caucasian nationality" in Chelyabinsk suspended from office

Julia Penzina, Chief of the section of the affairs of the underage (SAU) of Police Department, initiator of inquiry on pupils of "Caucasian nationality" in the schools of Chelyabinsk, was suspended from office until accomplishment of inspection, Press service of regional Directorate of the Ministry of Interior Affairs reported. Ombudsman of Chelyabinsk region Alexey Sevostianov considers that the police must know national composition of the population, however he emphasizes incorrectness of the inquiry.

It should be reminded that an information appeared in Russian blogs and mass media that a police officer in Chelyabinsk made an inquiry about schoolchildren natives of the Caucasus. To the respective request Director of mathematical Lyceum wrote in his official reply that "the only nationality in the Lyceum is mathematics".

Later Anzhelika Mesheriyakova, Head of Press service of Chelyabinsk Directorate of the Ministry of Interior Affairs, explained that in this way the police were collecting data for preventive work in order to avoid delinquencies among teenagers. She added that the request was formulated incorrectly and a service inspection started concerning the initiator of the request.

Chief of SAU of Department No 5 of Directorate of the Ministry of Interior Affairs in Chelyabinsk Julia Penzina was suspended from office for the period of service inspection. A decision on her professional adequacy will be taken upon the results of the inspection, RIA "Novosti" quotes today's report of the police.

There are no comments from Julia Penzina herself yet.

It is worth mentioning that there have been similar requests from the police in Chelyabinsk, heads of educational institutions on the city point out.

Julia Smirnova, Director of Gymnasium No 10, reports that during the past three years there have been requests concerning pupils ethnic Georgians and Tatars as well as ones of "Caucasian nationality" but employees of her Gymnasium pay less attention and try not to involve the children and their parents in this process if possible.

"Now we have no section "nationality" in our register, neither is there one on the personal records. Then we can comply with such requests just by intuition and the pupils' surnames, is it? That is what we did. When we received such requests we did not involve the children in this issue, we collected and submitted the information by ourselves", "First Regional Channel" quotes Julia Smirnova.

Meanwhile, according to the TV channel which refers to the police statistics, during the past four months of this year juvenile delinquency in Chelyabinsk has not increased but neither has it gone down. Since the beginning of the year the underage have committed about two hundred delinquencies but the statistics does not specify representatives of which nations are the most frequent lawbreakers, the channel remarks.

At the same time, Ombudsman of Chelyabinsk region Alexey Sevostianov speaks of existing conflicts on ethnic grounds and considers in this connection that the police must know the national composition of the pupils. According to him, it is "just information acquisition", not violation of human rights.

"It is good that law enforcement bodies took an interest in this problem. Nobody speaks of any sanctions against representatives of this or that nation. Our region is a multinational one and has always been peaceful in this respect. However, of late years conflicts on ethnic grounds started happening among the children… Though I agree that the request was formulated incorrectly", "Komsomolskaya Pravda" quotes Alexey Sevostianov.