Academics, students worldwide killed for beliefs or activism

Universities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Madagascar, Nigeria and Yemen have been highlighted as institutions where academics or students have been killed because of their beliefs or activism in the past academic year, in a report from campaign group Scholars at Risk (SAR).

As well as killings and physical harm or threats, the report notes academics’ and students’ losses of professional standing; travel rights; prosecutions for exercising free speech; and deliberate acts of coercion, intimidation, or threats of harm.

These attacks “undermine institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and educational functions”, SAR said.

The independent not-for-profit corporation hosted at New York University in the United States is an international network of higher education institutions and individuals defending academic freedom and the human rights of scholars worldwide.

In its 2021 Free to Think report, SAR said data collected from September 2020 to August 2021 noted 332 attacks on academics or students, lethal or non-lethal, in 65 countries. “Sadly, this data sample reflects only a small subset of all attacks on higher education during that time,” said the SAR report.

Lethal attacks

Regarding lethal attacks, the report recalled how at least three gunmen stormed Kabul University in November 2020, detonating explosives and opening fire, killing 22 people and injuring 50. At least 20 students and faculty were taken hostage.

The Afghan affiliate of Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility. That followed an attack by an IS-associated group just days before at Kawsar-e Danish Education Center, also in Kabul – a higher education preparatory institution – which killed 24 and injured 57.

Unstable Haiti, whose former president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July, saw a University of Haiti student shot and killed during a protest over education policy issues in the country’s capital Port-au-Prince at the National Palace, located across from the campus. Witnesses alleged that a palace guard shot the victim, Grégory Saint-Hilaire, in the back.

A similar outrage by security forces was witnessed at Madagascar’s University of Toamasina in February 2021. Gendarmes shot at student protesters, demanding the payment of scholarships. Police unleashed tear gas before shooting live ammunition. Johanelle Jacques Michel, a 23-year-old economics student, died after being shot in the leg.

Iraq also continues to be unsafe for free thinkers. In December 2020, Professor Ahmed al-Sharifi, of Al-Manara University College in the city of Amara, was shot and killed by unidentified gunmen.

Meanwhile, northern Nigeria remains a problem zone for attacks by Islamic militant extremists, with gunmen attacking the Nuhu Bamalli Polytechnic in Kaduna state in June, leaving at least one student dead. This was one of seven armed raids on educational institutions in northern Nigeria, with attackers often abducting students and staff and holding them for ransom.

And in Yemen in December 2020, extremists shot and killed Khalid al-Hameidi, the dean of the University of Aden’s College of Education in Al-Dhali. The victim was a secular thinker and known critic of Islamic extremists. He was traveling to the college when shot by at least two gunmen.

The SAR Academic Freedom Monitoring Project said the report responds to such attacks “by identifying and tracking key incidents, with the aim of protecting vulnerable individuals, raising awareness, encouraging accountability, and promoting dialogue and understanding that can help prevent future threats”.

The organisation has been publishing ‘Free to Think’ annual reports analysing attacks on higher education communities worldwide since 2015. SAR has documented 630 violent attacks, including 110 that occurred during the past academic year.

Non-violent attacks

As for non-violent attacks, SAR noted 111 wrongful imprisonments or prosecutions of academics and students, out of 700 recorded since 2015.

A good example, said the report, is an Algerian court sentencing Islam specialist Professor Said Djabelkhir to three years imprisonment on charges stemming from Facebook posts where he described certain hadiths – reports of statements by the prophet Muhammad – as “apocryphal” and labelled some Koran stories as “myths”.

Another example comes from Vietnam, where Professor Pham Dinh Quy of Ton Duc Thang University was arrested and prosecuted for articles he published alleging that a local leader of the ruling Communist Party had plagiarised his doctoral thesis. Pham was arrested and charged with slander.

And in Russia, police arrested four students from the Higher School of Economics and Moscow State University of Civil Engineering for posting a video on online student magazine Doxa, appealing to students to not fear expulsion from their institutions for supporting opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Police charged them with “involving minors in committing illegal actions” and placed them under house arrest, without internet access and barring contact with anyone other than their lawyers and families, unless approved by the state. If convicted, they could be jailed for three years.

Fired over beliefs

Another problem reported by SAR was authorities stripping academics and students of their positions over their beliefs.

In Bulgaria, the University of National and World Economy sacked Professor Martin Osikovski for publicly criticising a visit by Prime Minister Boyko Borissov in April 2021, saying it was too politically sensitive given an upcoming election.

In India, the Central University of Kerala suspended Assistant Professor Gilbert Sebastian for describing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a political organisation connected with the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, as “proto-fascist” during a lecture in May 2021.

And in January 2021, two students were suspended by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for organising a memorial commemorating the life of a student who died in 2019 after falling from the third floor of a parking garage during a democracy protest.

Travel restrictions

Travel restrictions are also used by governments and education authorities to impede the free speech of academics and students who challenge official orthodoxy, said the SAR.

Examples cited student Walid Salem being prevented by the Egyptian government from travelling to the United States to resume doctoral studies at the University of Washington. Salem had earlier been arrested in May 2018 and held in ‘pre-trial’ detention for roughly seven months, “apparently for his research regarding Egypt’s judiciary”, said SAR.

And in May 2021 Chinese authorities barred human rights lawyer Lu Siwei from leaving the country and traveling to the US to undertake an academic fellowship, on national security grounds, which the SAR said “appeared to have been based on his support for a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist who was detained after attempting to flee the special administrative region”.

Defending its work in the report, SAR said: “Protecting academic freedom and higher education communities from attacks demands the ingenuity and engagement of all sectors of society. SAR calls on everyone to join us in protecting those at risk, promoting academic freedom and defending everyone’s freedom to think, question and share ideas.”