It has been quite a few days since students from across the country are staging protests just to make their demands heard by the federal government as well as the Higher Education Commission. Instead of addressing their concerns, in some cities —especially of Balochistan — police baton-charged the peacefully protesting students including female students and arrests were carried out with the intention to intimidate and silence them.
With the initiation of online classes, Baloch and Pashtun students have been in a quagmire since then, because of the dearth of internet facilities in the peripheral areas they mostly live. But Ignoring all their predicaments and leaving them in constant mental torture, all the universities across Pakistan continued their classes. As of now, the final term exams were around the corner, enough was enough for Baloch and Pashtun students and they came out in large numbers just to demonstrate their frustration.
Not only local media houses highlighted the problems faced by students but the international media also gave it wide coverage in the shape of short documentaries. In one clip, a Baloch student studying at a public university in Lahore said that he had to scale the hill on the daily basis to get himself connected with the internet as there were no signals available at all on the ground level. In another documentary, a student was seen bellyaching against the unavailability of the internet throughout his locality and he further added that he had to travel a distance of 30 kilometers daily to reach another area in order to attend the respective online classes.
For some students like me, online classes are nothing less than a joke as we get up a few seconds before the class and attend the complete classes lying in our beds. But In the case of Baloch and Pashtun students and others living in remote areas of Punjab, it's painful beyond anyone's imagination and especially when it comes to girls who are not allowed by society to access male dominate public spaces with internet facility.
However, the collared students were released on that very day, June 24, evening after some eminent politicos, academics, and journalists condemned the inhumane arrests both on electronic and social media. Chairman of Pakistan People's Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari condemned the arrest of students. Taking to Twitter, he said, "To protest peacefully is a constitutionally protected right." He went on to say, "Strongly condemn the arrest of students in Quetta! Shutting out voices and high handedness has become a new normal under this regime. #PPP demands #releaseallstudents"..
In the era of social media, it's impossible to silence the students. Therefore, bearing these things in mind, state institutions must listen to the legitimate demands of students and address their concerns as soon as possible and try to end their misery, to avoid such protests in the future.
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter," said Martin Luther King Jr.