Call for Intensifying the Ongoing Struggle

The administration is not only violating labour laws and protecting corrupt officials and contractors, but also insulting the UGBM mandate, the opinion of the students and the entire JNU community, and the democratically elected representative bodies like JNUSU, JNUTA and JNUKA.

If we let them get away with this, if we allow even a single student to be punished arbitrarily for participating in a JNUSU-led protest, then we will be allowing the administration to dismantle the much fought for and much cherished democratic space in the campus.

NO RUSTICATION
NO OUT-OF-BOUNDS
NO FINES
NO PUNISHMENT FOR ANY STUDENT


Don’t let the dictatorial administration throw out students like the corrupt contractors throw out workers for daring speak for their rights. Build a united and uncompromising struggle against the draconian administration.
Join JNUSU protest demo against rustication of 8 students
and imposing a fine on 3 union office-bearers.

9pm, Ganga Dhaba, Saturday (23.6.2007)

University Officials have Rights, Workers and Students Don’t!

• Students participate in a JNUSU-led protest. Two days later, nine of them get letters of suspension. What follows is a month of harassment, intimidation and manipulation by the administration.
  
• Chief Security Officer, JNU, M.S. Cheema detains, tortures and humiliates a contract worker for three hours on false charges, extorts money. Complaints are filed (with the Equal Opportunity Office and the Proctor’s Office). Two weeks go by, no action is taken by the administration.
  
• Cheema has not been suspended or subjected to a proctorial enquiry, as we demanded. Neither has D.V. Singh, the Engineer guilty of intimidating workers and of serious corruption. And what of Jialal Malhotra, the contractor of SPS site? Or the high officials who have signed illegal contracts?

Moral of the story:
University officials have rights, workers and students don’t.

It is not a coincidence that the fresh round of repression on student’s movement came immediately after students pulled up M.S. Cheema publicly for his criminal behaviour. The show cause notices issued against 11 students are a direct challenge to the progressive students’ movement of JNU. It is also an attack on the student’s Union, designed to crush all genuine students’ assertion now, or in the future. It is a message to the university community to keep its head bowed before the almighty administration; or else.

The administration, hell-bent on suppressing dissent has once again defeated all hopes of dialogue on the core issue: the continuous violation of workers’ rights in JNU. Every possible labour law is violated and we hear of no concrete remedial measures from the administration; for the simple reason that the administration is the guilty party in the gross and continuing violations.

UGBM, the highest decision-making body of the JNU students, passed resolutions demanding scrapping of the proctorial enquiry and an end to selective and arbitrary targeting of individual students who were a part of a JNUSU led demonstration. Upholding the spirit of the UGBM, students declined to depose before the enquiry, and resolved to carry forward the struggle for workers’ rights. The show-cause notice therefore is significant for it bears the message that the administration is preparing itself for further action on individual students, hoping that resistance will be less due to the vacations.

We must answer the show-cause notice with a broad-based unity. During the course of the movement, other Unions, the JNUTA, JNUKA and JNUSA, have intervened and participated. These representative bodies must also pitch in now to safeguard the democratic ethos of the campus. A joint mobilization is required and the JNUSU must act immediately to facilitate it. If the administration is trying to crush JNUSU and continue with its anti-worker policies, it is only aunited movement of students, along with other democratic forcesthat can resist it. We must not forget that our real strength lies inassertive student mobilizations.

Divide and Rule – That’s the Game the JNU Administration is Playing

First, they try to undermine the collective nature of the JNUSU and divide the student community by issuing arbitrary suspensions and proctorial enquiry notices to individual students for a JNUS led collective protest.

Then they frame arbitrary and differential charges on individual students and issue show cause notices.

Divide and rule – that’s the game
the administration is playing.

It is obvious that the administration is not only trying to undermine JNUSU and the students’ right to dissent, they are also trying to break the unity of the students by singling out individuals, and even differentiate between those individuals by slapping randomly different charges on them, leaving the ground open for differential punishments according to the whims of the administration.

The administration is hoping that by this random singling out of individuals, rather than face the collective forum of the JNUSU, it will be able to divide the students and render the union inactive. We, the students must understand this nefarious tactic of the authorities and consciously guard against it.

Both the JNUSU and the UGBM had resoundingly exposed and rejected administration’s divide and rule policy and demanded that there can be no individual witch hunt for a collective protest under the JNUSU banner, led by the JNUSU office-bearers. We must not let the administration trample on the collective decision of the UGBM. We must not allow the administration to punish any student, in whatever form and to whatever extent. A unified response by students, teachers and employees is the call of the day, and this must be carried out without compromise, without bowing to the dictates of the authoritarian JNU administration.

The Struggle for Workers' Rights and Dignity Long Live!

Student-Worker Unity Long Live!