ISLAMABAD:
On the second day of protests by students and teachers of Bahria University against expulsion of two faculty members, one of the terminated lecturers, Qamer Riaz, addressed students outside the university’s campus on Tuesday.
“Education is a tool to bring change in the society,” said Riaz while addressing the students. “However, we have been engulfed in fear and our voices damped. We need to break the silence.” He urged students to raise their voice against the “regimental suppression” they are being subjected to in education institutes.
The students held banners and placards inscribed with slogans like “Don’t tell me how to talk; Don’t tell me what to say; Don’t tell me what to think”. They also chanted popular revolutionary verses of Habib Jalib, “Aisay dastoor ko, subah-e-banor ko mein nahi manta, mein nahi janta” (That kind of system, like dawn without light, I refuse to acknowledge, I refuse to accept).
Riaz, who was a lecturer in the department of management sciences at Bahria University Islamabad, was allegedly sacked and manhandled for speaking against the university’s policies in a seminar being chaired by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Chairperson Dr Javed Laghari on March 31. The head of the management sciences department, Dr Shafqat Hameed Rana, was also sacked allegedly for his stance taken against the professor’s termination.
A student at the protest said, “Teachers are like our parents and we will not tolerate them being humiliated and mishandled in public.”
The university management, however, in a statement said that Riaz tried to disrupt the HEC chairperson’s lecture inside the university’s auditorium. He was repeatedly advised by the rector to focus on the topic but when he refused to comply he was asked to leave.
The management said that Riaz was never manhandled and was allowed to attend to his routine the following day. Soon after, he started instigating students and teachers to rise against the management, which is “tantamount to creating a law and order situation and unrest amongst the students.”
The management, thus, was left with no option but to terminate Riaz’s services, the statement read.
Regarding termination of Hameed, the management said that he had resigned as the Head of Department of Management Sciences Department at the university and was hence relieved of his responsibilities as per rules. The management also denied reported news that Dr Shafqat was under pressure to allow admission of certain students who failed to meet set criteria and termed it as “totally fabricated and concocted”.
Riaz, the sacked lecturer, claimed that he was terminated in the middle of a semester, which is a breach of his contract with the university. The contract clearly states that a teacher’s contract cannot expire till the end of a semester, he added.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 6th, 2011.
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