Tens of professors affiliated with the 9th March movement for University Independence demonstrated in front of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research yesterday in protest of recent security incursions on university campuses. Security forces have allegedly entered campuses to arrest and abuse students.
The demonstrators raised paper signs saying, “We object to the beating of a future doctor at the Suez Canal University,” “Where is student Tariq Mohamed Khadar, who was kidnapped by state security officers at the College of Sciences in Alexandria?” and “We demand that security officers be forbidden from entering university grounds.” Other signs read, “We will not accept the beating and humiliation of students” and “Who let in the thugs to beat the students in Alexandria?”
“In the past, the men from state security would wait until nightfall to arrest students in their houses out of respect for university campuses. But the university is no longer sacred and the arrest of students on campus, and the incursion of thugs from state security has become the norm,” said Mohamed Abul Ghar, the spiritual founder of the movement.
The professors in the 9th March Movement criticized the university chancellors and rejected what they described as “the conspiring of the university chancellors and deans with the security apparatuses against the students.” They stated that they held the administrators of Egypt’s universities to be fully responsible for all physical, material and psychological harm that the students suffer as a result of security abuses.
In related news, nearly 100 students affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood demonstrated in University City at Cairo University two days ago in protest of recent decisions issued by the director of the university communities. The director had previously ordered the permanent expulsion of student Ahmad el-Baz, the temporary expulsion of another student and a weeklong prohibition on providing meals to four students on campus.
The students carried banners reading, “Who are we? Who are we? We’re the expelled students.” The protesters did not disperse until the director of the university communities intervened and requested that the students end the demonstration, promising that he would look into the matter with the vice-chancellor of academic and student affairs.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
