The situation on the campus
IT should be obvious to everyone that with each passing day the situation at Dhaka University keeps getting worse. This flies in the face of the earlier promise made by the government to the DU authorities that the detained teachers would be freed within a matter of weeks. That did not happen. And only the other day, the new adviser for education told the country that the teachers would be released within days no matter what the judicial judgement on the cases against them turns out to be. The vice-chancellor has been meeting the relevant governmental authorities and regularly coming back with assurances of the teachers' and students' release.
The stance that the authorities earlier seemed to adopt was one of a negotiated solution to the crisis. Such a position should have been maintained and quickly gone through in the overall interest of not only Dhaka University but of the government as well. The procrastination that has lately come to characterise the government's attitude to the issue has only ruffled feelings. The students of DU, under the banner of Students Against Repression (SAR), have been vocal in urging a quick, dignified release of their teachers and fellow students. On Tuesday, a gathering of students and family members of the detained at the DU campus was a clear pointer to the growing clamour for quick, positive action regarding freedom for the teachers and students on the part of the government. That the teachers of the university, including a number of widely respected, veteran academics, have expressed their solidarity with the students speaks volumes of how not just academia but the wider nation as well feels about the situation. And the authorities certainly ought not to take the controversial approach adopted recently in the matter of the detained (and eventually freed) teachers of Rajshahi University. If the government is waiting for the court to hand out punishment to the teachers and students before granting them 'amnesty', it will prove counter-productive. The detained should emerge free with their dignity intact. Nothing should be done that will antagonise teachers and students and so leave a bad legacy for the future.
A good, unqualified gesture should now be coming from the government. Let the detained teachers and the students now in custody be freed without any conditions or strings attached. All of them have suffered enough. They have already been in prison for more than four months without having been found guilty. It is the exalted position that our campuses have historically enjoyed which must be upheld, in the larger interest of the nation.
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