School in question says it ‘doesn’t know anything’
The media ‘furore’ over a nine-year-old Nepalese boy attacked by schoolmates who shouted: “You don’t belong here/ Go back to your own country” has sent the ministry of education on a fact-finding hunt.
And the situation, today, is that it cannot find anything to verify the account, given on air, by the director of a Church institution.
According to the ministry, it did eventually contact the school in question, only to be informed that the “only pupils of Nepalese nationality attending the school are in secondary education”.
The themes of racism/ xenophobia and how migrants’ human rights are threatened due to Portuguese bureaucracy have been at the forefront of attentions in recent months.
But this shocking story of a little boy who now has recurring nightmares and doesn’t want to go to school (even though his parents have reportedly managed a transfer to another school) has not yet been verified.
Talking to Lusa, education minister Fernando Alexandre, confirmed: “”When the news broke, the Ministry tried to find out what had happened. The services went to the schools and, in fact, with the contours that were described in the media, we cannot identify the case.
“There is, therefore, no disciplinary incident on record,” his Ministry has explained
But as the minister stressed today, “the fundamental point is to be alert to cases of violence, whether against foreign or Portuguese children, which obviously have to be reported, and we have to have all the strategies in place to prevent them from happening. And to ensure that these more fragile populations, who arrived in Portugal recently, are integrated in the best way possible”.
Acknowledging “a lot of uncertainty” about the case, Alexandre emphasised that integrating young foreigners into schools is a major challenge and that educational establishments need to be monitored to ensure that there are no episodes of violence against students.
“It’s one of the great challenges we have in education in Portugal – the large number of foreigners we have in our schools who obviously deserve a great deal of attention from the point of view of integration and their academic success”..
Asked if there were other cases of violence of this kind in schools, the minister pointed to information about “a slight increase in violence”, according to data from the Annual Internal Security Report (RASI), which will be officially presented soon.
“We are aware of this, of course, but all cases deserve the best attention and follow the normal processes with all due diligence and attention. No case of violence can be undervalued by any school,” he said.
As to the original story, told to Rádio Renasença on Tuesday by the executive director of Church institution, the Padre Alves Correia Centre (CEPAC), the education ministry said CEPAC had “initially refused to collaborate” with its questions on the case. Only “after insistence” was it able to find the school where the attack is understood to have happened – and then came the discovery that the school was unaware of it.
Source material: LUSA
