The jailed Makerere University Students’ Guild President, Julius Kateregga, has commended students for staging a peacefully demonstration calling for halting of the cumulative 15 percent tuition increment.
It has also emerged that students are demanding for the immediate degazzeting of the Guild Electoral Reforms and improvement of the sanitation in the smelly halls of residence.
Kateregga and other students’ leaders are among the scores currently detained at Wandegeya Police Station as sporadic protests continue to take center stage at the university and various hostels outside the university such as JJ and Douglas villa in Makerere Kikoni.
Currently, police in engaging in running battles with students.
The protests that commenced on Tuesday, were spearheaded by Mollie Siperia, the Guild Representative Councilor for School of psychology and one Frank Bwambale who were later nabbed and suspended by the university vice chancellor Barnabas Nawangwe. Unconfirmed reports claim Siperia has been brutally assaulted by unknown people.
In statement released by the Guild President, he commended students for standing up even when they are faced with blackmail and intimidation of suspensions from Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe.
“If you dearly feel that the demand for affordable Education is a fundamental right for you or anyone that you know of: your friends, your neighbors, your family, both current and future generations then you have reason to rise up tomorrow,” he wrote.
“I’m informed that plain clothed security operatives continue to torment students in their rooms, and that some have been brutally tortured and admitted to medical facilities. From now on, stay calm, but be intelligent. Self-defence is no offence.”
He said Prof. Nawangwe clearly stated that it was President Yoweri Museveni who instructed him to exorbitantly hike tuition fees. Let him return to President Museveni and inform him that we reject the increment and demand its immediate halt. Why does it have to bother him and not the President when we demonstrate against the increment if he was only a messenger? Why doesn’t he leave way for the President to intervene in the matter?
“There shall be no negotiations with colleagues on suspension and some in detention,” he said.
