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Belarusian State University refuses to reinstate opposition activist Franak Vyachorka as student

Belarusian State University (BSU) has refused to reinstate opposition activist Franak Vyachorka as a journalism student.

As Mr. Vyachorka noted in an interview with BelaPAN, while earlier refusals were flat, this time he was told to wait until the end of the winter exams and reapply for reinstatement in February 2009.

According to the young man, although Minsk’s Savetski district military recruitment office is ready to remove his name from the foreign travel ban list, the city military recruitment office has not yet given its consent.

This past February, Mr. Vyachorka, a third-year student with an excellent academic record, was expelled from BSU’s journalism department, officially for failing to pass two exams.

Mr. Vyachorka initially missed the exams and one resit opportunity because he was serving a jail term on a charge of using obscene language in a public place. The charge was brought against him after he had attended the trial of his associate.

The university’s administration rejected the student’s jail sentence as justification for his absence and told him that he would have just one chance to avoid expulsion. Mr. Vyachorka ultimately failed the examinations that he had missed. According to him, his examiners asked questions that went “far beyond” curriculum requirements. In particular, the Russian Literature examination commission grilled him about theorists of Italian Futurism, philosophical works by Schopenhauer and an association of Futurists.

The young man could not have been drafted into the army when he was a full-time university student. Last month the Minsk regional military recruitment office overturned a decision by a lower-level office to exempt him from military service for health reasons.

Mr. Vyachorka said in an earlier interview with BelaPAN that it was too late for him to be drafted as part of the fall call-up campaign and that his deferment over eyesight problems was still valid.

"Even if they begin calling me up, it won't happen until winter," he said. The young man added that by that time, he intends to complain about the decision, undergo an independent health examination, and, if necessary, go to court over the matter.

Franak Vyachorka, son of Belarusian Popular Front (BPF)’s first deputy chairman, Vintsuk Vyachorka, leads the BPF youth wing and chairs the Front’s culture commission.