Jeans and beards banned for Turkmen students in Belarus

The Turkmenistan Ambassador to Belarus has announced the interdiction forbidding female students to wear jeans and denim skirts. Male students are forbidden to wear beards and visit mosques, reports Radio Azatlyk quoting Turkmen students studying in Belarusian universities.

The demands were announced at a meeting of the Embassy representatives with students in February 2019. “The Ambassador demanded that we went to clubs and restaurants less often. He forbade girls to wear jeans and denim skirts and said that young men were not allowed to wear beards. He said that young men having beards looked like terrorists. KGB members are keeping an eye on mosques and know which students go there,” one of the students shared the details of the meeting.

Students asked the Ambassador why the Turkmen banks were blocking their banking cards. The Ambassador blamed them for it. Students withdraw money from their cards, exchange it to dollars and send it to their relatives who exchange the money on the black market in Turkmenistan, he said.

Turkmen students sometimes have problems with their banking cards in Belarus. There are also restrictions imposed on the amounts wired to students from Turkmenistan. The banking cards of Turkmen Vneshekonombank are their only method of payment available to the majority of Turkmen students. They can only withdraw $60 a month from their cards and the bank charges 25% of the sum for a transction.

The money sent by the parents is hardly enough to buy food and pay $20 a month for the internet, a student of Minsk State Linguistic University confessed.