QAU protest: To catch a few, cops clear out all

Four hostels vacated, booked students still at large; Mphil, female students spared.

ISLAMABAD:

After the deadline for vacating hostels in Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) passed, the city police raided the hostels on Saturday and got four of eight hostels vacated. Female and Mphil students’ hostels were not touched, said the police.

The Secretariat police said postgraduate male students were asked to vacate hostels by the university administration following Friday’s violent protest by a group of students demanding multiple favours from the institution.

The police said the students initially planned to protest against the vacation orders but left voluntarily after they were threatened with “forced eviction”. However, the dozen booked students were not found at the campus and were still at large, police said.

The police said “this time” they will not be spared and will be arrested whenever they return to Islamabad. Most of the 12 booked students are already wanted in earlier cases registered against them, a police official added.

On Friday, all departments of the university were ordered to close down for a week following protests that also disrupted an international conference underway at the Earth Sciences Department.

The students were demanding increase in the number of university shuttles, reduction in fees, installation of internet services in the hostels, withdrawal of FIRs against some students registered last month, improved meals in the hostels, legal status for the newly-formed Quaidian Students Federation and provision of more books and computers at the library.

QAU Registrar Dr Shafiqueur Rehman said the administration was “compelled to oust everyone as most of them were not neutral and had also damaged university property”.

Rehman said a University Disciplinary Committee comprising faculty members will meet on Monday to probe into the incident and identify those responsible for the violence.

“They will also suggest punishments for the guilty students,” said the registrar. He said after the inquiry, students would be allowed to enter the hostels, but only after submitting fresh affidavits pledging that they would not involve themselves in any violent activities in the future.

Rehman said he didn’t know of any teacher’s involvement in the protest. “The administration is too busy to keep a check on this.”

However, university faculty and police sources agreed that a lobby of teachers, including a female teacher from the Gender Studies department, were instrumental in provoking the students into protest.

“[On Friday], only one teacher, [the same female gender studies teacher], went to the students and openly asked them to ‘continue their protest as it was their right’,” said a police official who witnessed the scene.

Another police official said this female teacher was also contacting certain police officials and asking them to show leniency to the protesting students.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 29^th, 2012.