Four detained student activists start hunger strike

Four students detained in March following a walk-out by students at the main university in Guinea, have gone on hunger strike to demand that they be formally charged or released, a colleague of theirs who is still on the run, told IRIN. Former student leader Sidique Kaba, who has been in hiding since the protests against the demolition of student dormitories to make way for new lecture blocks, said that the four detainees began their hunger strike at Conakry's maximum security prison on Sunday. "They are refusing both food and water," he said by telephone on Wednesday night, adding that their physical condition had deteriorated. Kaba led a students' union which was disbanded by the government after the March strike. This was the latest of a series of protests over the dormitories issue, which began last year. Kaba and the other nine members of the union's executive were subsequently expelled from the state-run Gamel Abdel Nassr University. Kaba claimed that since then, he and his colleagues had been pursued by the police. "We live like rats in this place, moving from one hiding hole to another," he told IRIN. An aide to the director of prisons declined to say whether the government was indeed holding the four students or whether they were on hunger strike. He told IRIN that such questions could only be answered by Interior Minister Kiridi Bangoura.