One Of Largest Polish Language Schools PanProfesor Closed In Belarus

After a visit from notorious "guests".

The Polish language school PanProfesor, which has been operating in Belarus for almost nine years, has announced its closure following a visit by law enforcement officials and a search of its offices.

According to PanProfesor's Facebook account, the directors and teachers of several other Polish language schools in Belarus were detained on 21 December."Two weeks ago, representatives of some special services "came to visit" one of our employees in Minsk and then searched the office. As it turned out, on the morning of 21 December 2023, PanProfesor was not the only one to experience this: in several other Polish language courses, directors, staff and teachers were detained, some of them forced to record "confessional videos".To the already known accusations were added 'teaching Polish' and the like," the school said in a statement.

According to the school's management, the company had committed a number of "violations" and was offered the closure of the office, the suspension of classes and the liquidation of the company.

"These 'comrades' started almost from the very beginning to declare that our company had many violations, that we allegedly owe everyone money (which is absolutely false), and that some anonymous statement had been received (the content of which, of course, no one was allowed to know). The quintessence of all this was the statement, after seeing the Charter and other basic documents of the company: "You could all go to jail for a long time just for this". God only knows what one can see in the Charter with the naked eye.

But, as they say, one can't argue about taste. We were immediately asked to:

1) stop advertising

2) close the office and stop giving classes (even during the visit of "guests" the PanProfesor signs were torn off the doors)

3) liquidate the company

Due to the fact that we do not have the means and opportunities to at least somehow resist such things, as well as the fact that "sometimes it is not the law", we made a decision, painful as it was, but the only one possible in this situation: to close the Belarusian company. Since we have to do it ourselves, the company, which has not even started liquidation, is now rapidly accumulating debts. The emergency sale of some furniture and equipment has brought nothing but frustration. People have been made redundant and they have to find their way in this brave new world," says PanProfesor's management.

The school will complete the training of the groups online with the help of the Polish company. "Our partner company PANPROFESOR (Poland) is responsible for providing the training, so we hasten to reassure those interested - there will be no data leakage in this regard, and training obligations will be fulfilled in accordance with the contract," the school's management reported.

On 21 December, law enforcers came to the Polish language school in Minsk Polskipro and said they had received a list of Pole Card holders. Later there were reports of arrests in connection with preparations to obtain the Pole Card. The "repentance" video showed five people who introduced themselves as an individual entrepreneur, the director of the LLC, the director of the foreign language school, the founder of the LLC.

The director of one of the Polish schools said that the police had demanded lists of all clients over the past few years. According to him, at least two public schools have been closed.