PCHR Condemns Eruption of Violence at Gaza City’s al-Azhar University

[oberliner]

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns the eruption of violence at al-Azhar University in Gaza City at the end of last week. The violence involved students’ damaging parts of the university and destroying university property. PCHR calls upon the Attorney-General to investigate these attacks and bring the perpetrators to justice. The Centre also calls upon all parties to neutralize universities and academic institutions from the ongoing political conflict between Hamas and Fatah, and to maintain academic and public freedom as enshrined by law.

On Tuesday, 14 October 2008, around 100 students from the Islamic Bloc (the student wing of Hamas) at al-Azhar University, and other universities in Gaza, gathered together outside the campus of al-Azhar University in Gaza City. They then broke into the campus shouting slogans against the administration of the university and other academic figures.

A sound bomb was subsequently detonated inside the campus, and students from the Islamic Bloc destroyed the iron gates of the administration building of the university. They cut down portraits of the late Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat, stormed the office of the Board of Trustees and destroyed its contents. They subsequently moved towards offices of the deans of al-Azhar university faculties, threatening a number of deans and vowing further escalation.

http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2008/94-2008.html