Makerere University Guild President Julius Kateregga and 14 other students have been arrested as tuition increment protest enters day two.
Since yesterday, Police have been in running battles with students who have since extended the strike from campus to neigbouring Kikono thus forcing the former to firing rubber bullets and teargas to disperse off the protesters.
The students want the 15 percent cumulative policy scrapped on grounds that it was unfair to privately sponsored students.
Before the arrest, Kateregga said that several first-year students had taken a dead year because of the tuition burden.
“We’re still pursuing the road of dialogue but management seems to be hellbent on asserting their authority,” he said.
“We’ve discussed this with the Vice-Chancellor. Unless our people are threatened, our only mandate is to stand and protect the students.”
On Tuesday, 20 students were arrested for attempting to march to the office of the president to present a petition to President Yoweri Museveni to have the policy scrapped. They were later in the day released on police bond.
The vice chancellor Prof Barnabas Nawangwe last evening revealed that two students had been suspended for allegedly inciting violence.
He named the two as Mollie Siperia (the Guild Representative Councillor for School of psychology and one Frank Bwambale.
“I received a letter from the Vice Chancellor Makerere University; Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe suspending me from the institution,” said Siperia.
“Looking at this letter while my legs were coiled in one of the corners of the police cell with the comfort of the stench and cold floor, I pondered on how an innocent girl who can’t harm even a fly could have incited violence in the University she dearly loves!”
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