Police baton charge students

Police and FC personnel fire tear-gas shells and baton charge protesting students at the University of Balochistan.

QUETTA: Police and Frontier Corps (FC) personnel fired tear-gas shells and baton charged protesting students at the University of Balochistan here on Monday.

Different factions of Baloch Students Organisation (BSO) boycotted classes over what they said were unfair results of the entrance test to the pharmacy department.  BSO claimed that Baloch students had been deliberately neglected and denied admission by the head of the department.

The students staged a demonstration in front of the vice-chancellor’s office. The protesting students were standing before the arts faculty of the university when Frontier Corps and police personnel reached there and fired several tear-gas shells in order to disperse them. They also resorted to baton charge and rounded up some students. Several students suffered injuries during the baton charge.

The incident triggered panic among the students, particularly women, who were confined at the campus for an hour.

“Baloch students have been boycotting classes of the pharmacy department for the past two weeks to record their protest against the discriminatory attitude of the chairperson and vice-chancellor of the university,” said Assad Baloch, an activist of BSO-Mengal. He said that their demand is only that copies be rechecked by the National Testing Service. Out of 70 seats, the department had given admission to 15 Baloch students, he claimed.

According to the pharmacy department, some students barged in and took away the checked papers and forms, after which the Frontier Corps and police were called.

“We were not called while the test copies were being checked. I think there has been discrimination.  The chairperson with another teacher checked the papers and posted the results,” a teacher told The Express Tribune on condition of anonymity.

University officials denied the allegations and said it has become a routine matter for different organisations to resort to strikes over admissions. “The test copies had been checked in a transparent manner,” the university management claimed.

“Frontier Corps have been deployed at the campus for the past five months when two groups of students from different ethnic groups clashed over a petty issue because of which the University of Balochistan and other varsities remained closed for more than a week too,” a senior university official said.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 30^th, 2010.