Pupils at Vergina Lyceum in Larnaca face penalties after the Ministry of Education launched an investigation into photos showing them performing Nazi salutes and drawing swastikas in school spaces.
“We were informed yesterday and the incident is being investigated. It was a reckless action by the pupils. The director said he knows who they are and will call them to his office to impose penalties,” Giorgos Koutsides, deputy director of Secondary Education, told philenews.
Final-year pupils posted photographs of themselves making Nazi salutes inside the school whilst drawing swastikas on surfaces, according to complaints from various sources. The pupils have been organising and recruiting others for some time, sources told philenews.
The pupils created social media accounts to distribute Nazi material, including an Instagram account called “Verginazi”, and allegedly draw swastikas on walls and school equipment.
In one photograph, pupils held a sign they had taken from a road behind the school. Activists had placed the sign as a reaction to tree planting by the Jewish Community of Cyprus, which had initially announced the event would honour Donald Trump for the liberation of Israeli hostages. The pupils erased the word “children” from the sign and drew a Nazi symbol on it.
Koutsides said the posts were personal publications by the pupils made on various dates. Asked if the ministry would intervene at the school for educational purposes, he answered affirmatively, noting the ministry’s provincial officer in Larnaca will visit the school. “We will see if it’s an isolated incident,” he added.
Kostas Kosta, president of the organised parents association in Larnaca district, condemned the incidents. “We as parents are clear and consider these incidents unthinkable,” he said. “Anything that refers to the Nazi past and particularly symbols connected to the murder of millions of people, we condemn.”
“Ideologies of hatred have no place in schools,” Kosta said, calling on the Ministry of Education to address the matter.
AKEL Larnaca condemned the actions in a statement, saying they cannot be treated as bravado but are manifestations of a dangerous intolerant ideology with no place in schools and society.
“Immediate investigation of the incident and substantial measures by the Ministry of Education and the school administration are necessary,” the statement said. “Schools must teach respect for every person and not hatred. Fascism and Nazism have no place in education, youth and democracy.”
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