General Union of Students condemns forcible eviction of students

General Union of Students condemns forcible eviction
of students from residence building
in Baghdad University

The General Union of Students in the Iraqi Republic (GUSIR) issued a statement condemning an operation carried out on Thursday morning, 18 Sept. 2008, on the campus of Baghdad University in Jaderiyah, "by units of the Iraqi army accompanied by International Coalition forces", to evacuate a building used for the residence of students from the provinces. The building, in the Second Engineering College (Al-Khawarezmi College), was stormed, resulting in clashes between the army units and students, during which firearms were used to terrorize the students.

GUSIR's statement denounced this move by the college administration, especially that students were sitting their exams. It called for an immediate halt to all such measures, stressing the need for official bodies to respect the inviolability of the university campus, and to ban the use of violence, arms, force and attempts to terrorize students. "Dialogue and negotiations, based on the internal rules regulating university life, must be employed in order to achieve fair, logical and practical solutions."

The students organisation also called for conducting a just investigation "to identify those who were responsible for what happened in Al-Khawarezmi College," and demanded assurances to prevent the recurrence of such violations, as well as seeking proper solutions to the problems that university students in residential buildings have endured.

Source: statement issued by GUSIR spokesperson, 18 September 2008.