Khartoum – The Vice Chancellor of the University of Khartoum has ordered dismissal of 17 students for involvement in recent demonstrations and attacks on a number of teachers, destruction of property and examination papers.
The deans of faculties of the university described the acts as disgraceful and decided to shut down the university indefinitely on Tuesday.
Khartoum University is the oldest and most prestigious higher education institution in the Sudan.
Most of Sudan’s leading politicians, academics, graduates and professionals attended the British-built university of Khartoum, established in the early 1950s with the view to producing top notch cadres for the civil service at the time.
The students on the same day staged a demonstration which was dispersed by riot police, using teargas and “red water” the students could not identify, according to reports by local newspapers on Wednesday.
The order by the Vice Chancellor stipulated that six students should be dismissed from the university while 11 others would be suspended for two years.
The closure affects all seven faculties of the central campus.
However, it did not include the faculties of medicine and agriculture, which are located at other parts of the capital, Khartoum, away from the central campus.
The students of the University of Khartoum began staging demonstrations in mid-April protesting reports that the government was planning to relocate the faculties outside Khartoum.
That the government would sell the buildings, which are overlooking the Blue Nile, to investors. The government had denied such plans.
Historically, Khartoum University is known to be the source of most Sudanese popular uprisings, including those leading to Sudan’s independence in 1956.
The 1964 popular uprising toppled the first military government in Sudan after independence and the 1986 popular uprising toppled the military government of Field Marshal Ja’affar El-Nimeiri. (PANA/NAN)