School Principal Threatens to Expel Students over Demos

A school principal in Lebanon threatened to expel her pupils shall they participate in the nationwide protests gripping the country since October 17 demanding to overhaul the country’s political leaders.

An audio recording on Whatsapp sent by Mona Wazen, principal of Collège Notre Dame Des Soeurs Salvatoriennes - Abra, to her students went viral on Tuesday.

She addressed the pupils “mainly” baccalaureate-level students, saying in a demanding tone: “Each student who chooses to partake in the movements is considered permanently expelled from the school.”

A prompt reply from the Secretary of Union of Parents in Private Schools in Lebanon, attorney Sharif Suleiman, denounced in an audio what he said was an “authoritarian, intimidating rhetoric,” practiced by the principal. He vowed legal measures.

Caretaker Minister of Education, Akram Shehayyeb, issued a statement condemning the “substance of the voice message,” vowing that investigations will be run into the matter.

In a first since the beginning of the demonstrations on October 17, Lebanon’s school students turned to the streets on Wednesday joining the country’s revolution against the political class.

Students from different parts of the country, from north to south, left their classes some gathering outside the schools’ premises and others joining protesters near the state's institutions, chanting angry slogans at an “incompetent authority.”

Photos of Wazen with head of the Free Patriotic Movement, Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil and some members of his parliamentary blocked circulated on social media.