“They spit on them, beat them, dunk their heads in the toilet, and even try to rape them,” Vladislava Suprunovskaya, the Gomel TV and Radio Company host, said while opening the program “Only on Business” on October 10, 2024. The topic was the bullying of children of Belarusian political emigrants in Polish schools.
“Bullying and beatings of children of so-called political emigrants are apparently the norm there. I'll say more, cases of rape and driving teenagers to suicide have been reported. At the end of September, a 16-year-old girl committed suicide in Lublin. She was threatened, beaten, and bullied. The tragedy literally shook Poland,” the host said.
This bullying story is real. The girl who committed suicide was named Julia Zięba; she lived in Lublin. Local news media reported that for five years, Julia had been subjected to psychological abuse by classmates and changed schools. She had received no support from teachers or school administrators. However, in the context of bullying of Belarusian political emigrant children, this example is not representative, because Julia was Polish, not Belarusian.
According to posts on the Telegram channel “Bullying of Foreign Children in Poland,” children from various countries, including Poles, face bullying in local schools. The focus on Belarusians is manipulative.
In a 2023 study, which Poland conducts every five years, two-thirds of schoolchildren admitted to having experienced peer violence at some point. Moreover, over the past 10 years, children have increasingly reported psychological and physical violence from peers, rather than physical violence from adults.
Schoolchildren in Belarus also face bullying. For example, according to a 2018 UNICEF survey, 60.1% of students in grades 5–7 of secondary schools experienced bullying.
Following Julia's death, her parents held a memorial march and submitted a petition to the Polish Sejm demanding stricter school conduct rules and the introduction of classes teaching children how to communicate and resolve conflicts peacefully.