Courtesy of the Pan-African News Agency

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Students Force High-Level Response After Shooting
February 5, 2001

Ofeibea Quist-Arcton
Dakar

In the wake of a campus shooting, student leaders in Senegal have scheduled
a gathering for Thursday at the national university to report to their
constituents about their Tuesday meeting wth the country's president,
Abdoulaye Wade.

In addition to agreeing to receive the student delegation, Wade replaced the
government minister in charge of tertiary education, following the death of
the student, who was shot during violent clashes with security forces on the
campus of Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar.

The president redeployed the minister, appointing him Minister of Culture.
The new minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research is Libasse
Diop, a member of Prime Minister Moustapha Niasse’s AFP party. News of the
appointment was widely and loudly cheered by students at the university, who
held a national assembly meeting on Monday.

Diop told Senegal's national radio that he was taking on his duties at a
difficult time, but that dialogue should help resolve the problems of the
students. A former university dean, the new minister said he understood
students and could talk to them and that this would move things forward.

Last Wednesday, 31 January, student protests over conditions and stipends at
the university turned ugly when police used teargas to disperse crowds and
demonstrators. During the scuffles, a first-year law student, Balla Gaye,
24, was killed.

President Wade immediately called for dialogue, agreed to meet students and
promptly ordered a two-pronged independent investigation into the shooting,
from the police and the judiciary.

Speaking to local and international journalists in a wide-ranging interview
on Friday, Wade called last week’s events at Dakar University tragic and
said the investigators must get to the bottom of the matter and find those
responsible.

"But let me say that there are some worrying aspects to these troubles,"
said Wade, adding that the Senegalese police, which he described as a truly
republican force, was not supposed to be armed. "The police is not armed. I
have to remind people, who assume that the police has weapons, that our
police are not armed".

Wade said there had been very few police officers on duty at the university
at the time and they were overwhelmed. He said anyone who knew the location
of the local police station would realize that it was quite far from the
university campus.

So, queried the Senegalese president "how could a shot have been fired all
the way from there, because it’s been established that the shot was fired at
very close range? This sort of thing has happened in the past in Senegal,
but we’re in a new era now".

Wade noted that he had banned the use of teargas at the university, but said
he would not pre-empt the findings of the investigation with further
comment, except to say "we have all the reasons to believe that it was not
the police". But if the inquiry reveals who was responsible, said Wade, then
the person or persons would certainly have to face the full force of the
law, "because in our country, no one has the right to use firearms".

The constitution of Senegal guarantees people the right to march, with a
provision that Ministry of the Interior is informed.

Last week, ministers observed a minute’s silence in memory of the dead
student, who was buried on Thursday in the holy city of Touba after an
autopsy at the main hospital in Dakar. Students are calling for the family
of Balla Gaye to be compensated for his death.

Votes from the youth and women in March last year helped to elect as
president the one-time opposition leader, Abdoulaye Wade, ending more than
forty years dominated by the Socialist Party which had been in office in
Senegal since independence in 1960, maintaining a firm grip on power.

But in an irritated rebuke in response to a question from one Senegalese
journalist, Wade denied that he had made promises during the election
campaign to the university students. "Which electoral promises? Have they
told you that? Well, they’ve said nothing to me about it," barked Wade.
"Today is the first time I’m hearing about not honouring electoral promises
­ from you. No student has said that to me. Never".

Wade claimed that the phrase he had repeated over and over again as he
campaigned to become president was "With you, I’m going to build Senegal",
but that he had never given the impression he was going to create jobs.

One of Senegal’s leading newspapers, Walfadjri, has described the crisis and
killing at the university as a boil which Wade must lance, before it dogs
his presidency and casts a shadow over the upcoming legislative elections.


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