BEATING of university students and assaulting female students by police and a particular student organisation are not a new phenomena in our country. From the late 1980s, we have often been witnessing such incidents on different campuses in the country. But what happened during the last few days after the tragic death of a female student in a road accident on the Dhaka University campus is unprecedented and beyond imagination in any civilised society.

On the first day on May 28, the way the police behaved with the grief-stricken students following the death of Shammi Akhter Happy in the accident is unacceptable. Police indiscriminately beat up the students, including the female

ones, journalists, pedestrians, and whomever they got in their vicinity. The wildness of the police was not only unimaginable, but it also surpassed all previous records. They even dared to enter the classrooms and examination halls of the Institute of Fine Arts, dragged the examinees and students out of the rooms, and clubbed them mercilessly.

Those who saw the satellite TV clips and read newspaper descriptions could comprehend a fragment of the atrocities perpetrated by the law enforcers. But the eyewitness account was more vivid and horrific. At least 100 students were injured, many seriously, by the rowdy behaviour of police.

There was a time when it was unimaginable to beat a university student, especially a student of Dhaka University. Even during

Ershad's autocratic rule in the 1980s, the police did not dare to assault the students the way they are doing now in the so-called democratic era.

However, it is not new for the police to commit such crime on the DU campus. On July 23, 2002, the same police force launched an unprecedented assault on the students of Shamsunnahar Hall. Just imagine, what could happen when a group of rowdy male police

stormed into a female dormitory in the middle of night.

Now come to the second day's incident on May 29. The agitating students were demonstrating against the police atrocities of the previous day and demanding resignation of the proctor for his failure to protect the students. There was a strong rumour that the proctor invited the police onto campus, and if even the rumour is not true, he did not come to scene and take any

steps to restrain the police from their barbaric acts, which was his official and moral duty.

At one stage, the students entered the IFA building where the VC was meeting with the IFA teachers. The students were demonstrating inside the IFA, blocking the way of the VC to come out of the room of the director of the institute. Eyewitnesses said the VC did not try even once to come out of the room and calm the students. Rather he had a

good time drinking a couple of cups of coffee or tea in the air-conditioned room. He then telephoned the JCD leaders to rescue him from his imaginary confinement. And what did the JCD cadres do? They applied the example their predecessors set in the 1980s when the JCD cadres assaulted the female students of Rokeya Hall on the open street of the campus. They applied their previous experience and skill of 2002 when they swooped on the

female students who were demonstrating to protest the Shamsunnahar Hall incident.

The ruling party cadres not only beat up the male students with sticks and branches of trees but also beat the female students and molested them, according to eyewitness accounts. What a barbaric act! How can a student behave so inhumanly with a fellow student? It is only possible for the cadres of the ruling party who can act with impunity.

The ferocity of the JCD was not stopped there. On May 31, they again went mad, swooping down on a procession of combined student bodies. They beat up everyone whom the encountered and went on a manhunt at different places of the campus. Again, the female students were not spared from their fury.

We felt ashamed when we came

to know that the VC of the country's biggest university invited the cadres of a student organisation to rescue him instead of confronting the general students with his might and authority. The VC who does not have the moral courage to confront the general students, does he have the moral right to lead the university?

If he uses the cadre-power of a particular student organisation, does he have any authority to stay in office? By such act, does not he become the stooge of the particular party or organisation? How long these political stooges will run the educational institutions? I think there is no dispute in the notion that these stooges are always responsible for all the ills happened on the campuses.

Nazrul Islam is a freelance journalist.