Human rights activists concerned over student electronic season tickets

The Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Association is concerned over the Education Ministry’s idea of instituting school and college student electronic season tickets because this will enable the law enforcement agencies and the secret police to monitor the students’ movements, reports Deutsche Welle. “If the state follows us so closely, we will also watch closely for any violations of human rights,” says the Ukrainian Helsinki Association’s activist Maryna Hovorukhina. She believes the government’s attempts to collect data about Ukrainian citizens have become a trend: “I don’t think this is a coincidence. Remember the interior ministry’s idea about bearer train tickets?” She adds that this year the procedure of entering the passenger’s name, date of birth, and passport number into the train ticket was prohibited under public pressure. On the other hand, the Transport Ministry instructed intercity bus carriers to draw up lists of passengers and “coordinate” them with the state traffic police and local authorities. The Ukrainian Helsinki Association believes such student electronic season tickets are totally unnecessary, considering that student privileges existed previously. Now it will be possible to identify each individual. This is a threat to the freedom of peaceful assembly. Hovorukhina predicts that these electronic tickets will allow authorities to trace students on their way to a meeting of a student movement and then use sanctions. As it is, student electronic season tickets will start being introduced, stage by stage, beginning in September. The directive of the Ministry of Education and Science reads that these tickets are necessary to launch an online data-processing system to keep track of and provide for the students’ privileges and refunds when selling season tickets.