Student stories from around the world: October 4

Arthi Nachiappan reports on issues affecting students across the world: this week’s stories come from Egypt, Mexico and Japan.

Students returned to Cairo University after summer to threats that taking part in unauthorised protests would put their lives in danger.

Jaber Nussar, president of Cairo University, was reported in the Middle East Eye as having said to CBC: “We will cut off the heads of anyone who leaves his work or organises protests without permission from the university.”

Regional discrimination was introduced into the university application process this year to exclude applicants from Egypt’s southern provinces, as they are allegedly associated with Islamist movements.

Ministers allegedly announced over summer that the children of army generals and judges would be exempt from these rules.
Protest group Students Against the Coup have called for protests over the coming year, according to the Middle East Eye.
Security has been put in place on campuses around the country to tackling the rising tide of protest.

On the night of 26 September last year, 43 students were taken alive and have not been found since.

Their disappearance has been linked with criminal gangs and police corruption, according to a Guardian report.

At the end of September, more than 15,000 people marched through the country’s capital, Mexico City, in an intended act of solidarity with the families of the students.

The placards of many protestors suggested they held accountable the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto.

“They were taken, alive. We want them back, alive.”

The number of Mexico’s missing people currently stands at around 23,000 according to estimates reported in the BBC. The country took third place for its rate of fatalities from armed conflict, suggest statistics from the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

After decades of apparent silence in political discourse, it took Prime minister Shinzo Abe’s proposals to expand the country’s military role beyond self-defense to stir Japan’s students to protest.

Months of protests, some of which extended to tens of thousands of protestors, have accused the PM’s legislation as a violation of Japan’s pacifist constitution, according to Wall Street Journal reports.

At the forefront of protests was the Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy.

Prime minister Abe stated the the laws would ensure Japan’s security amid threats from the growth of the Chinese military and concerns surrounding North Korea.

Chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga said that the widely attended August 30 protest was fuelled by a misunderstanding of the legislation proposed, due to unfair representations of the policies in the news and from critics.