A director of a school in the settlement of Kara-Tiube reports receiving threats

Marina Savchenko, Director of secondary school No 12 in the settlement of Kara-Tiube, Neftekumsky district of Stavropol region, where girls wearing hijabs are not allowed to attend classes states that she is receiving threats. The policemenare already considering the question and are ready to provide her with guard. Plenipotentiary Alexander Khloponin supported Savchnko and Ombudsman of Chechnya Nurdi Nuhajiev is ready to help the parents who appealed to Public Prosecutor's office.

It should be reminded that in the beginning of October several residents of Kara-Tiube appealed to Public Prosecutor's office stating that their daughters were not allowed to attend classes with hijabs on. This information caused a discussion in the community and its participants are not unanimous about lawfulness of the demands of the school management who emphasize regulation on the pupils' uniform and secular education in Russia. Public Prosecutor's office started an inspection on the appeal of the girls' parents.

"I have already received a call from an editor of some newspaper in Dagestan. He mumbled my name and office so indistinctly that I could not here well and then immediately started shouting: "Who are you? How dare you infringe and oppress the Moslems?!", Marina Savchenko said.

She emphasizes that she was never going to offend the Moslems, on the contrary, she had repeatedly offered the parents compromise solutions for their children to attend school. In particular, school management offered the Moslem parents a special room where the girls could put off hijabs and put on ordinary headscarves instead. However, no agreement was reached.

Savchenko fears for her life and health remembering the murder of Viacheslav Kholshevnikov, director of a school in the neighbouring settlement of Kayasul in 2006. According to one of the versions, the reason for the murder was that together with local intellectuals he prevented appointment of a person with extremist views imam of the local mosque by the Wahhabis, "Izvestia" newspaper reports.

The paper emphasizes that Chief Directorate of the Ministry of Interior Affairs in Stavropol region is going to estimate the situation and provide the director with guard if she is in danger.

The incident in the rural school of Kara-Tiubeis an attempt to aggravate interethnic relations in the country using the parents and their children, Plenipotentiary of the President of the Russian Federation in North-Caucasian Federal Okrug Alexander Khloponin considers.

"We are a secular state where a person has a right of getting religious education. There are religious schools in many places, including many of them in North Caucasus, where the pupils can wear a special uniform", Alexander Khloponin said in his interview for the "First Channel" adding that he promised support to Marina Savchnko and protection from the state if necessary.

However, the residents of the settlement who appealed to Public Prosecutor's office have their supporters, either. In particular, Ombudsman of Chechnya Nurdi Nuhajiev decaled that he was ready to help their protection in case of infringement of their constitutional rights.

Nuhajiev refers to the Constitution of the Russian Federation which establishes that people with their rights and freedoms are the supreme value and considers it inadmissible to command a sense of mutual distrust and hostility to children since their schooldays instead of teaching tolerance to them.

Earlier, the "Caucasian Knot" presented a video "Hijab at schools and institutes of higher education (Dagestan)" in which residents of the republic expressed their opinion on the issue. In particular, girl students and a teacher of a local institute spoke that they did not consider it necessary to wear a hijab considering it just an expressive symbol of religious affiliation. Meanwhile, journalist Nadira Isaeva pointed out that hijab was a way of self-perception for a Moslem woman. Lawyer Ruslan Kadiev stated that hijab in itself could influence neither security nor educational process, therefore, wearing it at school was no violation of other persons' rights.