Earlier this month, four bodies were found in one of Wad Madani's irrigation canals, just miles away from Sudan's capital. The university town in the country's breadbasket has been spared the endemic violence that has come to characterize life in Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile. However, a fight over tuition fees at Wad Madani's Gezira University and the subsequent murder of four students has put events in the town at the center of Sudan's political future.
On December 5, a group of Darfuri students came together to peacefully protest their university's decision to charge tuition fees notwithstanding a 2006 presidential order, which promises free higher education to all Darfuris on the basis of the Doha peace agreement. The peaceful sit-in was interrupted by Sudanese intelligence and security officers who drove the students off campus using sticks and tear gas. The African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies, a Sudan-based human rights organization, reports that security officials chased the students from their meeting place and towards an irrigation canal. Almost 60 students were arrested on the banks of the river and taken into police custody. Although the majority of students were released on bail a few days later, the bodies of four students were discovered in the canal's ankle deep water. Witnesses told Amnesty International that the bodies bore The Wad Madani ... In the absence of a formal coroner's report, tensions have grown. Many in the Sudanese opposition see the regime's focus on students at higher educational institutions as particularly troubling, since it has the potential to wipe out the Darfuri community's nascent intellectual class ...
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