The News
November 9, 2007
Revival of student power
The images of hundreds of students in Lahore, including many young women, holding up colourful placards in the best coordinated protest to take place so far against the imposition of emergency rule on November 3, is enough to revive flagging spirits. For the first time in decades, indeed since the depoliticisation on campuses initiated with the ban on student unions over twenty years ago, Pakistan's students have shown they have conscience, will and loyalty to their country. It is also telling that the protest movement, expertly coordinated using SMS messages and internet chat services, has been initiated by a new generation of Pakistanis, raised in the years after the oppressive hold of the military rule that ended in 1988, and in most cases educated at the new, private universities with high academic standards that must take credit for producing thinking, active minds.
The students at the prestigious Lahore University of Management Sciences, who organised the protest, refused to be bowed down by heavy-handed tactics by the police who had surrounded the vast campus. Nor were they deterred by thuggish cops wielding batons who chased students across the campus, prevented them from moving outside its gates and stopped other students from joining the rally. Journalists who took photographs, too, were harassed and had their cameras seized. Despite these considerable odds, the rally, held within the university premises, and supported by faculty members, has made its mark. This is all the more so as coordinated rallies by students were staged in Islamabad, where police were surprised by the sudden appearance of students at a short
but effective rally, and at other campuses in Lahore. Across town from LUMS, at the FAST-NU University, several dozen students held a rally which broke up as frazzled police contingents rushed to the site.
Smaller rallies were also staged at the University of Punjab, at other private colleges and even at high schools, where protesting students have been wearing black armbands. Though the plan for the separate allies to come together did not materialise, the message delivered to the authorities is a clear-cut one. Even the use of extreme force, such as that used so far by the police, is unlikely to be sufficient to silence dissent. Nor are people as indifferent to events, as cowed down by state brutality, as Pakistan's leaders had perhaps hoped. The 'Youth Parliament' established last year by students at various campuses
to take up key issues, has managed to generate considerable concern regarding national events among young people. The evidence of this change in attitudes, of an end to indifference within a generation long labelled as being immensely selfish, has been visible over the past several years, with lively debates and discussions held at many institutions.
In the current climate, as the students spearheading the movement make efforts to link up with counterparts elsewhere, and also with other groups such as lawyers, their efforts could play a pivotal role in determining the outcome of the present crisis. Certainly, the young men and women behind the rallies have shown a way, given a direction, to their elders to follow. They have ignited a spark of light amidst oppressive darkness, and it can now only be hoped this light is not allowed to fade out and die in the difficult days that lie ahead.
