Senegal: Students Force High-Level Response After Shooting

5 February 2001
allAfrica.com
By 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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