An animated gif making the rounds of the new social media platform Google+ shows a teacher about to slap a student, and Korean students instantly whipping out their smart phones to capture the abuse. Citizen journalists in Uzbekistan have recently recorded rowdy students, including a prosecutor's daughter, harassing teachers they try to bribe.
And now Turkmenistan's small but hardy citizen reporters' corps has produced a videotaped scene of a female teacher clobbering a student with the heel of her shoe, the independent news site chrono-tm.org reports.
It's quite startling to see how this teacher persists, chasing the hapless youth around the classroom.
Turkmens daring to shoot such scenes and upload them through the heavily-restricted Internet in Turkmenistan take enormous risks. Recently a reporter from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Dovletmyrat Yazkuliyev, was sentenced to five years of prison on fabricated charges for his independent reporting of the explosion in Abadan.
Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter. Support Eurasianet: Help keep our journalism open to all, and influenced by none.