For Magazi Ibrahim, Hyderabad was a city considered as a good place for African students until a few years ago. But now, the president of the Foreign Students Association (FSA) gets calls regularly about issues of racism from his fellow countrymen and students of other nationalities studying here.
Mr. Ibrahim, who is from Uganda and pursuing his pharmacy degree here, also said that the authorities fail to understand their problems at times. “And also, at times locals mob us without any reason. We never understand why they are angry with us,” he added.
“We want to highlight that we are peaceful people. Our girls are molested, and many times African students are victims of hit-and-run cases, without the perpetrator of the accident getting punished,” said Emmanual Omurunga, a Kenyan national studying in Hyderabad, who is also the chairman of the African Students Association.
When asked whether such issues are brought to the notice of the police, Emmanual said that students are ‘disgusted’ given their behaviour. “Some times the police don’t help us and support the locals, because of which many students do not even go to them. However, the Osmania University police are good, and some of the other officers are good and help us,” he explained.
Both of them participated in a peaceful demonstration here on Saturday at Dharna Chowk, where more than 200 African students staged a protest demanding that justice be done to the Tanzanian national who was assaulted in Bengaluru a few days ago. Gathering under the banner of the African Students Association (ASA), the foreign nationals highlighted the issue of racism as well. “It was not like this in Hyderabad earlier. People who studied here told me that. However, the situation is worse in cities like Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru,” said Mr. Ibrahim. Mr. Emmanual, however, felt that Hyderabad is a ‘good place’ for foreign students, but that a handful of locals were causing problems for them.
“There might be a few bad African people here, but they are not students, and not everyone is like them,” pointed out Mr. Emmanual.
