CAIRO: University professors have alleged that the administration of Ain Shams University allowed “thugs” to assault students and prevent professors from handing out leaflets on campus.
On Thursday a delegation of Cairo University professors went to Ain Shams University, also in Cairo, where they began distributing leaflets, accompanied by colleagues from Ain Shams University.
The leaflets summarized a recent Cairo administrative court judgment that held that the presence of Interior Ministry police officers on Cairo University’s campus is illegal, and that these bodies must be replaced with security bodies answerable to the university.
Abdel-Gelil Mostafa, a Cairo University professor and member of the March 9 group for university independence, told Daily News Egypt that while distributing the leaflets to students on the Ain Shams campus a man snatched them from his hands and then ripped them up in front of him.
Mostafa says that the individual in question, who he named as Gharib Mahmoud, is a “thug” and that “it is very well known that he participated in these kind of atrocities in 2007” during student union elections.
Mostafa alleged that then Ain Shams university vice president Ahmed Zaki Badr — now the minister of education — “allowed thugs to come onto campus and punish students” at the time.
This policy has continued under the current administration, Mostafa alleges.
He says that individuals armed with “iron chains, knives, rubber tubing and scissors” were allowed onto campus on Thursday by the interior ministry security bodies which man university entrances.
The Cairo University professor says that security bodies remained “passive” during Thursday’s events and did not intervene when a group of about 6 or 7 young men began physically attacking students.
Pictures and videos published by the El-Youm El-Sabe’ newspaper show individuals carrying sticks and chains attacking students. At least two of the individuals are identifiable as part of the group that confronted Mostafa in a video aired on talk show “Masr El-Naharda” (Egypt Today.)
El-Youm El-Sabe says that its reporter Mohamed El-Bedawy was himself physically assaulted. When El-Bedawy went to the police station to report the incident he was himself arrested on charges of physical assault and only freed after paying LE 500 bail.
Mostafa discovered that charges of physical assault had been also filed against him when he went to file a complaint about Thursday’s events.
In a statement issued on Saturday, the administration of Ains Shams University responds to what it calls the “false allegations pertaining to the assault on students and allowing bullies into Ain Shams University” circulating in the media.
The statement alleges that Mostafa and other professors broke into Ain Shams University and trespassed onto its campus “without accessing prior permission from Ains Shams administration [sic]”.
“Instantly, Ain Shams University students objected to the attack on the prestige of the university by outsiders. The case resulted into a sorrowful encounter between both parties involving verbal abuse as well as an attempt to cause a stir within the university, the matter which indicates a deliberate intention to engineer a confrontation with students [sic]”, the statement reads.
“ASU administration confirms that the entire incident was exclusively between a number of concerned ASU students and a group of irresponsible outsiders,” it continues.
Mostafa described the statement as “extremely miserable” and evidence of Ains Shams University president Maged El-Deeb’s “belief that universities are a fenced-in place that people shouldn’t go in or out of except with permission from him. Consequently, he believes that we are invaders. He ignores that we were accompanied by several Ain Shams university professors”.
Speaking on “Egypt Today” El-Deeb said that university professors must seek permission of university heads in order to enter other university campuses — a claim refuted by Mostafa who told Daily News Egypt that nowhere in university regulations does it state this.
Playing down the incident, El-Deeb acknowledged that there had been incidents of violence involving “thugs” at Ain Shams University in the past but that this was now “history” and no such events have occurred since he assumed his post at the university.
Speaking on the same program, Minister of Higher Education Hany Helal cast doubt on the authenticity of the photographs and video aired.
Last week the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) published a statement in which it said that Ain Shams is the worst university in Egypt in terms of incidents of physical assault of students and other violations which occurred between the start of the academic year in September and Oct. 31, 2010.
A statement issued Sunday by AFTE and 11 other human rights organizations condemned Thursday’s events as “stark violation of the principle of life on campus which should be a space for freedom of thought and expression and not a playground for police thuggery”.
