Uzbekistan officially tells Russia to mind its business after school scandal

Deputy Speaker of the Parliament of Uzbekistan Alisher Kadirov called on the Russian Foreign Ministry to "mind its own business" amid the scandal involving a school teacher who assaulted a schoolboy for using Russian language during a lesson of Russian.

"It would be right if they were to fully manage their internal affairs, and not worry about our internal affairs," Kadirov said.

The reaction from the Russian authorities is an attempt to "make a fuss out of nothing," the Uzbek official added.

It was previously reported that Rossotrudnichestvo (the Federal Agency for CIS Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation) would ask the Russian authorities to consider a possibility to ban the teacher who assaulted the schoolboy in Tashkent from entering Russia.

On September 25, Gazeta.uz publication reported that a teacher had assaulted a sixth-grader in class after the boy asked her to teach a Russian language class in Russian, not in Uzbek. The teacher's attack was captured on CCTV cameras.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova requested clarification from Uzbekistan after the incident was made public.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also made a representation to the Ambassador of Uzbekistan to Moscow, Botirjon Asadov.

The Commissioner for Children's Rights of Uzbekistan, Surayo Rakhmonova, took the situation under personal control. She explained that the teacher was on probation and was not officially employed yet. According to her, the sixth-grade student did not receive any serious injuries and his health was not in danger.

The Russian language teacher at Tashkent School No. 188 beat up a sixth-grader after he reprimanded her for teaching a Russian language lesson in Uzbek in a Russian-language class, Nova24 said.

It was also reported that it was the teacher's first day of work at that particular school.

The boy's mother said that her son's class teacher forced him to apologize to the teacher who had publicly assaulted him. The child is depressed and does not want to go to school.

The police and the Ministry of Education are conducting an investigation into the incident, the press service of the Commissioner for Children's Rights in Uzbekistan said.

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Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan, is a doubly landlocked country located in Central Asia. It is surrounded by five countries: Kazakhstan to the north, Kyrgyzstan to the northeast, Tajikistan to the southeast, Afghanistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest, making it one of only two doubly landlocked countries on Earth, the other being Liechtenstein. Uzbekistan is part of the Turkic world, as well as a member of the Organization of Turkic States. Uzbek, spoken by the Uzbek people, is the official language and spoken by the majority of its inhabitants, while Russian and Tajik are significant minority languages. Islam is the predominant religion, and most Uzbeks are Sunni Muslims.