Students strike following the arrest of a colleague

The students of Gamal Abdel Nasser University in the Guinean capital Conakry have gone on strike to demand the release of a student leader who was arrested on Wednesday. The 14,000 students at Guinea's oldest university were also demanding an improvement in conditions at the cash-strapped university and the settlement of various other grievances. An IRIN correspondent who went to the campus on Thursday found lecture halls empty and no signs of academic activity. Students sauntered in groups along corridors and halls, while lecturers were hardly to be seen. Ousmane Toure, a spokesman for the striking students, warned the university authorities not to provoke trouble. "Up to now our strike has been peaceful; we do not want violence because we are intellectuals," Toure said, "but if the authorities react violently to this impasse, we too will react violently." There's been no official reaction to the strike from the university authorities. Toure spelled out a long list of other grievances which the students wanted to be addressed. "We want 11 students who were expelled from Kankan University (in eastern Guinea) last year to be reinstated, and we also want the method through which the authorities admit students into university to be overhauled," he told IRIN Toure said only 6,000 of the 26,000 students who took university entrance exams this year were awarded places to study. "The rest were thrown out," he lamented. He also demanded an increase in the meagre student living allowance of about $31 per term and the building of more lecture theatres to end chronic overcrowding on the campus. Toure said at times 1,000 students had to cram into a lecture hall. Gamal Abdel Nasser University was only built to accommodate 7,000 students, but its population has since doubled.