UNIVERSITY students must be allowed to protest and not be silent on matters which they feel that they can express their opinion on, says University of Technology chancellor Dame Jean Kekedo. “When will the Government ever learn that the people’s voices are represented through university students,” she said. “I am sure most of the leaders and those who are in government authority have participated in such protest in the past, and we expressed our opinion freely without being threatened, harassed or even shot at. “These students have an opinion, they only want their opinion to be heard, the more you suppress them and they get frustrated that is when they find other means to express that anger.” Dame Jean said the university management was responsible for the safety of each students on campus, however, it continuous to be a burden on the path of the management to ensure the students protest peacefully.
She urged the police and defence personals to provide security and allow for students to do peaceful protest instead of depriving their democratic rights to express their opinion. Meanwhile, Dame Jean said that her concern was not about the recent bilateral defence agreement between PNG and the United States of America, but with the way the government was suppressing people’s opinion using threats from the police and the defence force. “We all have kids attending those tertiary institution whom are future leaders of our country, why deprive them their rights to express themselves?” she asked. “The more we continue to go down this path, we will put out the flames of nationalism and that patriotic feeling, which we ourselves once had.” The National / PNG Education News Also read Comments are closed.
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