Author Topic: Blood-letting on campus  (Read 1153 times)

Offline گل

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Blood-letting on campus
« on: August 29, 2008, 05:37:33 PM »
Blood-letting on campus

The death of three students and a watchman at the Karachi University on Tuesday in fierce clashes between two student groups points to the gravity of the situation on the campus. It is not that the fighting was unexpected. As facts show tension had been building up between the IJT and APMSO supporters for a week since the row over a 'peace march'. The two had also clashed on the NED campus on Saturday. On Tuesday, firing between the two groups began in the morning, stopped briefly after intervention by KU officials and the Rangers, but resumed in the evening and continued for half an hour resulting in casualties. Such is the extent of enmity between the two groups that they even fired at the hospitals where the injured were taken, and some vehicles were burnt. The student activists also beat up some administration officials.

Two major questions crop up here. First, how did the students manage to enter the campus with arms when the Rangers were on duty? Either the IJT and APMSO activists managed to find loopholes in the Rangers' security system, or they had stocked fire-arms on the campus somewhere and made use of them. The firing lasted intermittently the entire day and this should have given the Rangers time enough to end the shoot-out. Instead, the two warring groups seemed to have all the opportunity in the world to turn the campus into a battlefield. Second, why did the KU administration not make its presence felt and intervene to stop the clash? This gross failure on the administration's part reinforces the general belief that the teachers themselves are divided and have for that reason undermined their professorial authority that is so essential for maintaining the dignity of any educational institution and for inculcating discipline and moral values among students and inspiring them to higher achievements in education and life. Finally, the political parties must share the responsibility for what happened on Tuesday. The student groups owe loyalty to the Jamaat-i-Islami and the MQM. To blame only the students amounts to whitewashing the crime of the parent organisations. The clash was not something unusual, for these armed groups have been spilling blood now for decades. It was during Ziaul Haq's regime that student militancy emerged as an ugly feature of campus life. To blame only the student-killers is to absolve the top leaders of the two parties of their role in failing to check violence on the campuses.
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