Egypt: Univ. Professors Protest Outsiders’ Assault On Students

A host of university teaching staff members as well as the March 9 Group staged a march of protest, on Wednesday, at Ein Shams University after the Faculty of Law witnessed assaults by 200 outsider hooligans whom the university administration hired later last week to assault Muslim Brotherhood students; this assault led to injuring about 15 MB students.

The professors walked round the university headed by Dr. Abdul Wahhab Al Messairy , Dr. Essam Hashish, Dr. Mohammed Abul Ghar, Dr. Aida Saif Al Dawla,  Dr. Magdy Korkor, Dr. Medhat Assem, Dr. Yahya el Kazzaz and Dr. Mohammed Sharaf, as well as scores of university students topped by student Amr Hamed, the secretary general of the recently formed Free Student Union. This  Union was  crafted by students as a substitute for the government student union in which the regime backed students who won unopposed in a bogus election.

Dr. Al Messairy assured that the protestors condemn the university allowing a gang of hooligans into its campus. He depicted this as a sign of deterioration of the society’s construct of values and principles, calling on all the educated elite to take a course of action towards this collapse of morals.” It seems that many people have come to accept injustice, but we are here to remind them that- by this march of protest- we show our dissatisfaction with all forms of injustice’, he said.

Regarding the experiment of the Free Student Union, Al Messairy said that it is one of the democratic means, pointing out that it was monitored by law professors. He lamented the way used by the state in handling the issue, saying that it was supposed to responded through dialogue, seeing what happened as a bad omen to the entire society. Several other professors voiced their outrage over the incident. ” All disputes could have been ironed out through friendly debates between professors and students”, said Dr. Mohamed Abul Ghar, who said that they are not here to support one side against the other, but to protest hooliganism and the ensuing regrettable incidents.

For his part, Dr.Magdy Korkor assured that the professors participated in this march of protest to stand by their students in the face of government and student hooliganism which has become on the rife in universities in general and Ein Shams in particular.” These happenings illustrate that the regime opinionates to consolidate its power through force after it has failed through ballot boxes”, he said.

Other Topics:

Campus confrontations
Al-Ahram Weekly – Cairo,Egypt
MIDDLE EAST: Weekly update of human rights violations in the …
Reuters AlertNet – London,England,UK