Save our students from torture
On the first day of the first-year class, I told my students, “Form groups and walk around the campus today. Meet others and talk to them.” A student stood up and said, “We roam around the campus the entire day. We can’t go to our rooms till four in the morning.” He said that he was given place in a hall ‘gono’ room three days ago where they were not allowed to sleep before midnight. They had to join processions at midnight.
Two days after that I learnt that this didn’t happen just in his hall, but was a practice in all the male student halls. What if anyone didn’t want to join the processions or refused? The students explained to me that they would then be taken to the ‘guestroom’ and beaten up, in a sort of ‘guest orientation’. So if one was to stay in the hall, one would have to join the midnight processions and would not be able to go the rooms. The students would have to learn the names of the student leaders, salute them and follow certain other ‘rules’.
On Tuesday, four students of Dhaka University’s Sergeant Zahurul Huq Hall were beaten up with cricket stumps and iron rods hand handed over to the police through the hall administration. It was said that they were suspected of being involved in Chhatra Shibir politics.
The victims said that they were summoned on suspicion of being Shibir men and beaten with hammers, thick cables and cricket stumps. The next night clashes broke out between SM Hall and Surja Sen Hall.
It is a fact that a large percentage of the Dhaka University students come from extremely poor families. They have no alternative but to stay at the university halls.
After the BUET (Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology) student Abrar was killed in October last year, there was a furore of discussion about the gono room, guestroom and political room culture. It seemed at the time that there would be radical changes in the public universities. The Dhaka University administration seemed to be taking note of the oppression and torture of the students. They had series of meetings and spoke about evicting unauthorised students from the halls. But such decisions reached as far as the notice boards only. Nothing tangible came about.
The vice chancellor, in fact, gave an extra boost to the student leaders. A few days ago he said that the first year students would not be given place in the halls. He blamed the shortage of space for this. However, it is the first year students who need place in the halls the most. Many of them have come to Dhaka with the sole purpose of studying at Dhaka
University and don’t even have any relatives in the city. If they are not given rooms in the halls, where will they go?
In some halls, the first and second year students are accommodated in the verandas. Three years ago, university student Hafiz Mollah died of pneumonia after having to sleep in the veranda in the extreme cold. The main factor behind this shortage of space in the halls is the administration’s subservient helplessness to the ruling party student front’s control of the hall seats. The hall president and general secretary of the ruling student party have two or three rooms reserved for themselves. The new students are also victims of the fracas in the halls over the new ruling Chhatra League committee in the offing. Not finding any place in the halls, when they approach the ‘big brothers’, the ruling student party leaders, they are forced to take part in these political programmes.
Most of the girls and boys of the first year who have rooms in the halls have entered through these leaders and are marked as ‘political’. They are under control of the ‘big brothers’ and ‘big sisters’ and are identified as their activists. They get involved in the torture, violence and clashes in the halls in order to appease these leaders. Rather than university students, they are known as workers of the political organisations. And today these first year newcomers who are serving the leaders, tomorrow themselves will become the oppressors. That is how the university is running.
The High Court has issued directives against the excessive ‘ragging’ and other harassment of the new students in the universities. It was said that anti-ragging committees were to be formed in the universities and other educational institutions. But now surely the administration must be held liable for the new students even now having to wander around in the cold nights, not being able to enter their rooms till four in the morning. Dreams are smashed when students face such experiences in the very first month of their university life. I heard from a few girl students who managed to get into the halls ‘politically,’ that they even had to take permission from the ‘big sisters’ to go to the shops within the halls. Some of them think this is the university law.
We observe all this, hear about it and sometimes sigh. But those who are to actively halt such practices and remain silent. I request everyone, including the administration, please let us save these children. They have come to study, not to join any political party. They are our children. Let them be given hall seats through the administration, let them spend five unhindered years in the university. Hall residence is their right. Why can’t we guarantee them this right in full safety?
*Zobaida Nasreen is a teacher of anthropology at Dhaka University and can be reached at [email protected]. This piece has been rewritten in English by Ayesha Kabir.