Kampala, Uganda – In April, dozens of students gathered at the Kyambogo University Student Center. The chairman of the council then, Akiso Benjamin, called the meeting to fight against the growing frustrations of the university administration on issues such as sanctions for late registration, the missing academic results and students blocked by exams, despite the payment of most of their tuition fees.
Eight days before, he had officially written to the administration on these questions, but they did not answer, he said.
Halfway through the meeting, the police stormed. “Students started to panic, get out of the building,” he said. Police dismissed live ammunition and tear gas which spread to conference rooms where the courses were in session.
They arrested 20 students, including Akiso. They loaded it and nine others with three charges of participation in a riot, of incitement to violence and the illegal assembly.
Patrick Onyango, spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police in Kampala, said the police had given a request from university officials while the students exercised an illegal demonstration and forced others to participate. As the police arrived, he said, they had reason to believe that the students were about to become violent.
But students and human rights experts say that armed responses to students who protest against government or university policies in Uganda have become a disturbing and illegal trend. They say that such actions violate the constitutional rights of students to meet and protest and have transformed universities which were once political activism centers into fear centers.
“(Public universities) funded by taxpayers’ money have been controlled and militarized insofar as even a peaceful assembly by students is unacceptable for administrations,” explains Akiso.
But Reuben Twinomujuni, director of communication at Kyambogo University, considers it as a security problem. Although the University respects the freedom of expression of students and is open to dialogue, he says, they must also consider the security of the wider student community.
“We want to make university a safe place for everyone,” he said, adding that the demonstrations were motivated by a small number of students whose objective was to create chaos. “We can’t let the few things spoil things for the rest.”
While recognizing that the university received the letter of request, Twinomujuni said at the time that the vice-chancellor was on sick leave. The vice-chancellor returned the same day that the demonstrations broke out and responded to the letter, says Twinomujuni, but the situation had already increased.
The problem does not affect the University of Kyambogo alone. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, in October 2019, the security forces responded with a force similar to the protests of students at the University of Makerere on cost increases. They used tear gas, attacked student dormitories and made mass arrests, according to the report.
Journalists trying to cover the demonstrations and who are already faced with increasing violence of the security forces in the country, were also arrested.
Earlier this year, students from various universities were arrested while protesting against the funding presumed by the KCB Bank of crude oil oil in East. Local media have documented many other repressions on student demonstrations by security forces in recent years.
Such a response to students is not new in Uganda or in the wider region. From the end of the 1960s, some of the oldest universities in East Africa – such as the University College, Nairobi, the predecessor of Nairobi’s today’s University in neighboring Kenya and the Makerere University in Uganda – had solid student movements that have often attracted hard deckdowns of governments.
But it was easier to organize such demonstrations in the past than today, explains Joe Besigye Bazirake, research partner at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa, and former student at the University of Makerere.
“At Makerere, students would have demonstrations from the university at the municipal council, which was revolutionary,” he said. “But it’s impossible today.”
There is a reason with the more aggressive approach, he said. The government in Uganda understands how powerful student movements can be. “They are young, observers, active with ideas about how they want to be governed,” he said.
In fact, some government leaders began to organize themselves when they were university students, he said. Among them, the president of the country, Yoweri Museveni, who was already politically active in high school and later at the University of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania, where he led a group of Pan -Africanist activists.
They know that people pay attention to what’s going on in universities, says Bazirake. “If Makerere is on fire, the nation is careful. Power is careful.”
This aggressiveness “makes universities (A) a hostile environment for students,” said Henry Byansi, a lawyer who represented the Akiso case in court and is also responsible for programs in Chapter four Uganda, a legal non -profit organization.
It is not only the use of an armed police, explains Ankunda Shivan, a first year student in land surveying and geometry at the University of Makerere. Repression in universities has taken various forms over time.
“If Makerere is on fire, the nation is careful. Power is careful.” Research partner
For example, she says that the administration now controls the elections of the student guild at the University of Makerere. Over the past three years, the elections have been fully carried out online. Physical campaigns are no longer allowed. This change, she believes, is part of a wider effort to suppress students.
But Zahara Nampewo, dean assistant of the School of Law of the University of Makerere, says that administrations must make difficult decisions, especially when the expressions of the students of their freedoms become violent. The university, she says, prohibited physical elections after the death of a student from another university during activities related to elections at the University of Makerere in 2022.
“Yes, the freedom of association of students and the physical campaigns are important. (But) the security of each student and all those who work and cross this university are essential, ”she says.
However, she adds, it is important for administrations to open a space for a significant dialogue with students. It could reduce and even put an end to the involvement of armed state forces in universities.
Akiso and the nine other students accused by the authorities were released on bail four days after their arrest, but their test was far from over. The university suspended them for 30 days and prevented them from accessing the campus. This meant that they could not pass for the exams of this semester. Then in July, the university expelled Akiso, a decision he intends to contest before the court.
He thinks that university’s actions are intended to scare students in silence. But it is not dissuaded.
“No matter the situation, I am determined to continue to express my right to meet peacefully when universities define unjust policies and ignore our problems,” he said.