October 3, 2005	Monday	Sha’aban 28, 1426

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window).

RAWALPINDI, Oct 2: The People’s Rights Movement (PRM) on Sunday condemned, what it called, the terror being unleashed by the government on the Sindhi university professors for opposing the corporatisation of the education sector.

In a statement, the PRM said in recent weeks, Prof Aftab Shah and Prof Amar Sindhu had been threatened with disciplinary action for opposing the measures being undertaken by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in the education sector.

The statement said recently Rangers had been deployed on the university campuses in Sindh and force was used to suppress the peaceful protests by the students and teachers.

“The PRM blasts this resort to force and demands that the authorities responsible for the deployment of Rangers and issuance of threats to Prof Sindhu and Prof Shah should be issued show cause notices immediately.

“The unwillingness of the authorities to tolerate democratic dissent is totally in contradiction to the principle of academic freedom that should be promoted on all university campuses as well as primary and secondary educational institutions,” the statement said.

The statement said that the PRM believed that the Higher Education Commission since its inception had promoted a model of higher education that drew inspiration from the World Bank’s vision of higher education.

This vision, the statement said, was elitist and to the detriment of majority of Pakistani youth, who did not have the material resources to benefit from such education.

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)