Armoured Vehicle Against Unarmed Students! Peruvian Police Storm National University

Hundreds of policemen using armoured vehicle and tear gas stormed the Peru's largest university, the National University of San Macros, to remove the students who had been occupying the campus in a protest. The students led occupation was against the changes made to their education curriculum without consultation with the student body and without adequate preparation .

The police intervention, resulting in arrest of 17 students and injuries to 30, was authorized by the university’s Dea, Orestes Cachay, who had refused to negotiate with the students until the occupation of the campus ended. 

Condemning this authorization by the Dean and other members of the university council as an attack on "their own university, their own children", the University Federation of San Marcos (FUSM) mobilized for a sit-in before the public prosecutor's office, demanding the release of the fellow students who have been detained.

Criticizing the police for disproportionate use of force against students who were willing to have a dialogue, the executive secretary of the National Coordinator of Human Rights, Jorge Bracamonte, has expressed concern that the detained students may be “improperly” prosecuted. “There is a lawyer on behalf of the students and on our part we have come to give support to the students,” he said.

#UNMSM ? | De esta manera ingresaron agenten policiales a la ciudad universitaria de la Universidad Nacional de #SanMarcos (@UNMSM_).
Al menos 13 estudiantes han sido detenidos, según la Federación Universitaria. pic.twitter.com/aXfDseOsdr

— Wayka (@WaykaPeru) April 6, 2018

Questioning the legality of this police operation, which was not formally ordered or notified by the judicial power, Julio Quintanilla, the lawyer representing the students, has requested a parliamentary removal of the Interior Minister, Mauro Medina.

The university Dean, Cachay, has been summoned by the congress, before which he will be appearing on the 9th of this month to explain the events that unfolded yesterday and the day before at the university campus, apart from detailing what attention has been paid to the demands made by the students on the issue of implementing General Studies plan.

It is in protest against this plan, applicable from this year, that the students began their occupation of the university, blockading the entrance to the campus early in the morning on 5th of this month.

The plan requires the more than 5,000 graduates entering the university from this year to be grouped into four departments: Medical Sciences, Business Sciences, Basic Sciences, Engineering, and Human Sciences and Policies. For the first year of their graduation, all the students under a given department will study common subjects. For example, “a student of the professional academic school of Social Communication, which belongs to the Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences, will study together with other Law and Education students,” La Republica explained.  

It is not against the general studies itself that the students had been protesting, explained Gerardo Salas, the president of FUSM. The issue is that “general studies have been constituted without the participation of the students and (that) the institutional and legal bodies, such as the University Council and the University Assembly, have been violated," he affirmed.

A persistent media campaign has been underway, labelling these students as “vandals” and “delinquents”, with some journalists calling upon the state to arrest the leader of the union. Defending his union against the accusation that because of their occupation, the entrants for this year have not been able to start their classes, Gerado Salas has argued that they could not have possibly had the classes even in absence of occupation, because the required teachers and infrastructure for general studies have not been allotted by the university.  

“The implementation has been made without the designation of the Faculty of General Studies,” FUSM said in a statement, according to which, only a few days ago, Humanities and Legal and Social sciences department was designated classrooms in different engineering faculties, which shows that the infrastructure to teach the incoming students are not in place.

However, the Dean has made it clear that the implementation of general studies must be carried out as planned. All academic and administrative activities in the university has been suspended until April 9.