Thursday, 19 January 2012A group of 14-year-old schoolchildren won a school tolerance contest in St.Peterbsurg, using a team name containing the Neo-Nazi symbol 14/88, St.Peterbsurg’s Ekho radio station reported.
On November 16, a school in Russia’s second largest city, St.Petersburg, held a competition marking International Tolerance Day, the school’s deputy principal, Tatiana Vasilenko told the radio station.
Later the pupils uploaded a photo of their contest award certificate onto the Internet. It features the name of the team written in big italicized lettering, containing the numbers, St.Peterbsurg’s Ekho said.
The numbers 14/88 have Nazi-linked connotations to followers of right-wing extremist groups - 14 stands for a 14-word slogan coined by the U.S. Nazi, David Lane, who was a member of the white separatist organization The Order, while “88” represents "Heil Hitler” since the letter H is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet.
Vasilenko, who was in charge of the competition, confirmed that she had not properly controlled the contest.
“It seems that none of the school’s staff understood it [the meaning of the slogan]. The fact that the teachers didn't notice it is a catastrophe,” Dmitri Dubrovsky of the St.Petersburg Ethnography museum told the radio station.
He added he was pleased other people did not notice the symbol either, Dubrovsky said.
There is no information about whether the school or the pupils will be punished. |
Thursday, 19 January 2012
Ria Novosti
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