At the Finnish lyceum, students sang the song “Mother” and waved Russian flags. This is reported by the public broadcaster Yle.
The “incident” that occurred on Thursday, during the Day of Cultures at the Tikkurilan lukio Lyceum in Vantaa, caused a wide resonance in social networks and criticism from the Minister of Education of Finland.
“A week ago, on Thursday, the senior high school was smoking in Vantaa celebrated the Day of Cultures. At the event, young people of Russian origin performed to the tune of Tatyana Kurtukova’s song “Mother”. The song means “Mother Russia”. The song has garnered over 130 million views on YouTube and is widely performed in Russia. The song, among other things, says that for the singer Russia is “Holy Russia”, and for others it is a “splinter”,”the publication says.
It is noted that during the performance at Tikkurila High School, large Russian flags fluttered on the stage.
In many Russian-speaking groups in Finland on the Facebook social network ❶, the performance was highly praised, writes Yle. However, the head of the Ministry of Education, Anders Adlercreutz, in an interview with Yle, said that the school in this case did not show prudence.
“A school cannot be an arena where such a propaganda message is imposed on students and staff,” the minister said.
He also considers waving Russian flags at the event inappropriate.
The headmistress of Tikkurila Secondary School Marianna Syudyanmaanlakku, when asked by Yle why they were allowed to wave Russian flags at the event, replied that this was the right decision.
“My judgment would fail me if I banned Russian flags, but allowed other flags. We took into account that everyone has equal opportunities to highlight the language and culture of their country in accordance with the curriculum,” she explained.
Yle asked the director several times about the Russian flags, but she repeated that she did not consider the war a reason for exclusion.
According to the director, Ukrainian children study at the school, but she does not remember the exact number of them. The director stressed that students of Russian origin asked Ukrainians if they wanted to take part in the performance, but “this did not happen for some reason.”
The publication reports that on Ukraine perceives the song “Mother” as propaganda. She supposedly caused a resonance in this country in January, when young girls from Kiev published a video in which they perform a song by Kurtukova. They were interrogated by security agencies.
As EADaily reported, there is a scandal in Ukraine: near Kiev, in the middle of the night, unknown people listened to the song “Mother Earth”.
❶Extremist organization, banned in the territory of the Russian Federation