Nearly 200 United Kingdom-based academics have written to the Vice Chancellor of Hyderabad Central University asking him to get rid of the police on campus, to protect its students and staff who have been held in custody and have had charges pressed against them, to bring normalcy to campus, and to assure its staff and students that their freedoms, dignity and rights will always be respected.
Affiliated to leading U.K. universities like the University of London, Oxford University, London School of Economics, University of Warwick, University College London, University of Sussex, the academics have expressed their “deep dismay over the police brutality directed at students and faculty members of Hyderabad Central University, starting on March 22, 2016.”
They note that “students and staff calling for justice at the University have had charges pressed against them, have been disappeared from the campus, and that there are reports of assaults on them in custody. We condemn the police presence on campus, the authorities’ denial of water, electricity, and food to those remaining in student accommodation, and the brutal attack on a PhD scholar for cooking in University premises.”
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The unrest, coming in the wake of the suicide of the Dalit PhD student Rohith Vemula “constitute a severe assault on democratic rights of free expression and thought, assembly and association,” the academics state. “As scholars who admire the work of many academic colleagues and alumni at HCU, we are concerned that HCU seems to be fast descending into a campus of unrestrained repression of dissenting voices among students and staff.”
> (For full text and names of scholars click here)