Condemn The Police Atrocities On Students Protesting Against Fee Hike In HPU!

From Kolkata to Shimla, the students’ movement is growing. In the face of relentless police assaults, students are protesting for their right to quality education at affordable rates and against the cultures of impunity which allow all kinds of sexual violence. Even as we stand in solidarity with the students’ movement in Jadavpur University, students have united across political lines to take on the authorities and the fee hike in the Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla. The HPU authorities expelled nine students from SFI on Wednesday, after the movement against the fee-hike had begun. Two days later, protesting students were lathi-charged by the police in which many students were injured and over 400 students arrested on Friday on grounds of violating section 144. The lathi-charge took place on the campus of HPU as students ran into the main library as they were chased by the police. Students of HPU are also calling the condition of the campus “curfew-like.” The HPU students, through this movement, have made it clear that students will not tolerate neo-liberal assaults on their universities. The students of HPU have said in one voice, that we will not stand for commercialisation and privatisation of education and that we will protest all such moves.

AISA stands by the students of HPU in their fight against fee-hike. Such incidents of violent repression by the state and university authorities will not be tolerated. Oppression might be the privilege of the authorities but protest is the right of the students and we will continue to protest any and all moves to privatise education.