Bullying in class once used to exist in the form of verbal attacks only. Today it belongs with the category of capital and extremely serious crime. Thousands of resident of Kazakhstan signed a public memorandum stating that.

Cry for Help

Dina Smailova-Tansari, President of the Public Movement Against Violence “Speak Up!” re-posted that public memorandum in her Instagram-account.

According to the memorandum, in the last year and now Kazakhstan school students have suffered from humiliations by contemporaries and teachers. Besides, those humiliations often escalate to the level of serious and extremely serious crime with prior planning and conspiration. 

Forms of crime are following:

– Children extort money from other children threatening to beat them up, humiliate or blackmail them.

– Children commit sexualized bullying, force other children imitate sex and rape, sometimes involving 12-years old.

–  Children rape other children.

–  Children attack other children, strip them, record same on video and distribute videos in social networks.

 –  Children involve other children in sex, video record that and then blackmail victimsи.

School administrations prefer to keep above in secrecy – for sake of prevention of reputational damage. To succeed, very often, school administrators, in conspiracy with parental observation panels, blame victims and their parents. Thus, the problem remains contained. Often, victims seek radical solution for the problem – they commit suicides.

Authors of the memorandum report that in the last year and in 2023, the “Speak Up!” foundation collected 25 addresses from parents of boys who were raped. Authors also state that school principals either linger the processes of investigations or contain problems at once. School principals financially motivate unfaithful policemen, as well as teachers, psychologists and children and parents to keep their eyes closed. The purpose of the memorandum is to open up investigations of crimes that were not brought to the court.

“For each felony of the kind, we demand immediate initiation of criminal investigation of crimes, as per Criminal Code article #140 and suspend heads pf schools, where the felonies were committed. If bullying exists in a school, that means lack of proper prevention, encouragement of perpetrators and ban for teachers to seek help from police. We must put the end to such attitude to crimes, that children commit in relation to other children. Policy of silence and indifference, practiced by teachers, must by stopped, as well. Tolerance shown by state and society to school bullying is a platform for continuation of violence” – follows from the memorandum.

They Are Kids?

Things with school administrators are clear – teacher and school directors conceal the crime. But we do not have the clear vision on what needs to be done in regards to underaged violent perpetrators.

Indigenous legislation is silent about instruments of punishment for sexualized bullying. Lawyers explain, that hooliganism or petty crime is the only category of crime that society can refer to, while attempting to bring a child to responsibility. That, however, does not fully reflect the real picture.

Recently, a pack of juveniles stripped a teenage girl, recorded that on video and distributed the video on social networks. Police could not categorize the crime, as sexualized bullying, because the crime was committed by contemporaries of the victim. But it is obvious, that if an adult committed that crime, the crime categorization would be different. 

Nothing Else to Do?

Today it is obvious that brutality among children is reality. Psychologists explain that present youngsters have vague notions of the good and the bad. That is because their relations with parents are not based on trust. Lack of emotional contact forces children to shut-in and seek brutal ways of expression of internal aggression. 

The bullying, including sexualized bullying is not a manifestation of the sexual drive among youngsters – it is the public demonstration of appetite to dominate and exercise force, especially in companies of those underaged. 

Another reason why adolescents demonstrate shocking brutality is the availability of the time for leisure and lack of variety of recreational occupations. At present, children physically exist in the virtual world, online-games and chat-rooms. Very few of them attend sports circles or other hobbies. Back in early 2000-s, schools had free-of-charge volley-ball, drawing and singing classes. Today, those circles are not available in all schools, and the government ceased the per capita funding of same.

But the government did recently commission a new project aimed at availability of various circles for children. When it came to implementation, it turned out that financial appropriations got expropriated and disappeared in unknown direction. Children who were lucky enough to avail themselves of free circles, today have concerns that the initiative will proceed to exist. That is a different problem, however. More important is to have a broad and result oriented discussion on bullying in class. Lack of means to keep children occupied and busy in the time of leisure is just one of the problems, that gives the grounds for children to manifest brutality…