Asmara University has reopened to allow students to register for the upcoming academic year due to begin on 8 October, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported on Thursday. Many of the students returned to Asmara last week after attending a controversial summer work camp in eastern Eritrea. There were accusations that at least two of them died of heatstroke while in the camps, situated in Eritrea's arid desert lands where temperatures regularly climb to over the 40 degrees centigrade. An original work programme which the students were meant to take part in had to be cancelled following widespread student protest over the arrest of their union president, Semere Kesete, on 31 July. Kesete was apprehended after making a speech in which he criticised both the summer work programme itself and government interference in university affairs. Ten days later hundreds of students were rounded up and sent to the desert camp, 30 km south of the port city of Massawa. AFP reported that the students appeared to be in good shape and glad to be back in Asmara. Kesete, meanwhile, remains in prison.
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