Education

No need to sound the alarm--I am writing for the blog, which automatically means everything is fine. Including me. It was a little bit scary when it happened but things have quieted down. I am extremely careful and have a lot of folks looking out for me.

Monday, May 8, 2006

Today, there were gunshots on campus. I heard the shots a little before noon. Then someone hollered through the window of the office to shut the window and get down. “They’re shooting.” I hid myself behind a metal bookshelf away from the window for a while. I shut the window and locked the door. Then things seemed to calm down. Then they heated up again. And this repeated itself. There were people running for cover. The shooting was coming from the main entrance to the campus, which is visible from the hallway in front of my office, which fortunately faces the rear of the building, opposite the action. Still, it is only about 50 meters away from where I was.

People were running for cover. I was hiding. It took about 30 minutes to get any kind of information. Still things were not clear. The shots were warning shots. Nobody had been shot. And the fact that there were still shots every few minutes was hardly reassuring. The military continued firing shots (again apparently in the air) and set off tear gas on the campus to try to disperse the crowd. It was serious. After about an hour, at a moment when things seemed to quiet down (although things kept going well into the evening), I made it out of my office and eventually found my way home. Before leaving, I called a friend who I knew was on campus and even closer to the scene to make sure she was ok and we left together.

It was hard to get information about what was happening, and after a day or so it is not much easier. There is one thing that everyone agrees on--the arrival of the soldiers makes things worse. It quickly escalates things and makes a bad situation much worse. And the soldiers become the target of everyone’s anger.

Although I still don’t know anything for sure, here is what I have pieced together. The ISTM students, who I mentioned in the blog last week, came back up to campus. One story I heard was that the conflict started over a broken engagement, where an ISTM student’s friends came to UNIKIN and beat up the guy who broke off the engagement (and took back gifts he had given her). So then a series of fights between students took place. Last week’s conflict sent several people to the hospital, including a campus officer with a broken leg. This week, the campus police called the military to campus. And the military started shooting. Supposedly in the air in an attempt to disperse the crowd. But students got enraged at university police for calling in the military who were now firing weapons on campus. UNIKIN students, in their own words, decided to “correct” and “educate” the campus security. They targeted the commander of the campus police and beat up one of the Rector’s bodyguards. I heard that MONUC (the UN force here, the largest contingent in the world) had to come into rescue the commander who did get beat up, and I did see people chasing a UN vehicle from my office window. The bodyguard ended up in the hospital. (Aside: I am pretty certain that I know him. When I arrived here, he helped me to get keys made for my office--the Rector’s former office. Or so I thought at the time. A few months later, when I needed additional keys made for another lock, I found out that under the bodyguard’s watch I had been ripped off. I paid $5 for two keys, which should have cost $3, and by all accounts he knew I was overpaying.)

The students also trashed and burnt up the campus police office. They smashed the tv, burnt the papers. I went by the place yesterday--24 hours later--and there were piles of burnt debris and the smell was still in the air. And there are some injured campus officers walking around. A couple years ago there was a demonstration in which students killed several police officers. And the police have in the past shot and killed students on campus. Thankfully, it appears that nobody is dead.

Things have quieted down. But the campus was really hot. Really hot.