Student Protest Controversy Rumbles On

Nearly two months after Kabul police opened fire on students demonstrating over poor food and living conditions, killing at least five, an official inquiry ordered by President Hamed Karzai has yet to come up with its findings.

On November 12 and 13, 2002, students at Kabul University took to the streets after their canteen ran out of food, as had happened several times during the previous week, leaving many hungry in the middle of the Muslim fasting week, when devout Afghans are not permitted to eat until after sunset. They also demanded a constant electricity supply so that they could study as the end of term approached.

Shortly after the students were initially allowed to march, a large force of police and troops attacked them with clubs and rifle butts and, when the protesters responded with stones, opened fire. Hospital sources said five students were killed, and three others were still unaccounted for. Human rights groups said 41 people had been injured.

The security authorities sought to play down the incident, saying that only two were killed and five injured, and blaming the students for inciting the response by throwing rocks and damaging cars. They also claimed the protests were politically motivated and had been organised by supporters of al-Qaeda or the Taleban.

However, Karzai, who has made education one of the main planks in his reforms after the intellectual poverty of the Taleban’s five-year rule, said the students had been “martyred”, ordered an official inquiry and promised to improve conditions in the student hostels.

According to the attorney-general’s department, 11 officials - including two senior police officers and two soldiers - and eight students are in detention over the incident while their cases are being investigated.

Also in detention is the assistant manager and security manager of the hostel, after investigators discovered they were handing out short measures of bread, sugar and other food to the students. The hostel manager and an assistant escaped and were being sought by police, security sources said.

Attorney-General Abdul Mahmood Mudaqiq told IWPR, “We have promised that this investigation will be impartial, and we aim to keep to that promise.”

However, there was considerable scepticism among students and human rights activists that an inquiry team headed by a deputy interior minister, and including officials from the justice, higher education and national security ministries, would be able to come up with a balanced report.

“The government is a party in this dispute, but is also conducting the inquiry,” said a fifth-year engineering student at Kabul University. “If there is nobody from the students’ side to defend them, how can the inquiry be impartial? Everyone knows who the guilty ones are in this case. We’ll see what the commission comes up with.”

Sayed Abdullah Ahadi of the local human rights group Cooperation Centre for Afghanistan, CCA, agreed. “It is obvious that the security forces fired on the students, and they must take responsibility for that. Those who ordered police to open fire should be punished, they didn’t act on their own initiative,” he said.

CCA director Haji Baqir Rasikh said firing on students, even when they were demonstrating, was unacceptable in any society. He called for the commission to work under the scrutiny of an international organisation, to ensure fairness.

The November events have already caused an apparent split among senior officials in the key ministries, with the security departments taking a tough line and the presidency a considerably softer one.

Higher education minister Shareef Fayez told IWPR two days after the incident that the shootings were wrong and the students’ complaints legitimate.

“The police were supposed to use tear gas or water against the (demonstrators). They were not supposed to shoot them,” he said.

Karzai himself admitted during a recent review of his first year in power that a lack of professional training in the police force, many of whose members are illiterate or have only a primary-level education, was at least partly responsible for the tragedy.

As for the hard-pressed students, there have been some improvements in their conditions as the story of their plight prompted a number of foreign countries to send in blankets, computers and other equipment and pay for improvements in the utilities.

However, there is still an acute lack of space in a hostel built originally for 800 students, but housing 2,671 at the time of the protest. “The rooms are supposed to cater for eight people, but are currently holding 30,” new hostel manager Hazrat Mir Jalali told IWPR.

Mohammad Naeem, a fourth-year economics student at Kabul University, acknowledged that the problems of electricity and water had been solved, but said the quality and supply of food had not improved.

Asked why the students were not planning new food protests, he replied, “After last November’s demonstrations we know now that there is no democracy in Afghanistan, and people can’t demand their rights. If we protest again we’ll be killed or imprisoned.”

Danish Karokhel is an IWPR reporter