Sudan: Khartoum University’s students hold massive protest against police, administration
December 29, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – A massive student protest took place on Thursday inside the campus of Khartoum University against the background of last week’s events in which the Sudanese police entered the university twice and cracked down on students.
In protest of Thursday’s crackdown and a subsequent university administration’s resolution authorizing the police to enter the campus, the students refused to sit for exams and held a sit-in on Sunday, prompting new clashes with police forces which broke in again and arrested over 70 students.
Around 5,000 students toured the university’s campus on Thursday and delivered a strongly-worded memo to the university’s administration, calling for the resignation of its director Sidiq Haiati on the grounds of what they termed as acts of “administrative collusion” which allowed police forces to invade the campus and arrest students.
The memo also called for holding police forces accountable and receiving an apology from the ministry of interior as well as compensating the students who were affected by the incidents.
Sudanese authorities accuse opposition political parties of standing behind the unrest in Khartoum University. The chief of police in Khartoum State this week said that their forces were ready to continue fighting the protests.
Sudan has largely survived this year’s wave of popular uprisings which swept across the Middle East and toppled long-ruling autocratic regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
But public discontent is growing due to worsening economic conditions created by the departure of oil-producing South Sudan as well as the eruption of wars in the border states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile.
(ST)