PNG university students keep away from campus

Transcript

The President of the Student Representative Council at the University of Papua New Guinea says he is trying to maintain calm around the student body after last week's unrest at the university's Waigani campus.

However Kenneth Rapa says it's up to government to respond to outrage in communities around PNG over police opening fire on students after they tried to march to parliament to support a planned vote of no-confidence against Prime Minister Peter O'Neill.

Dozens of students were reported to have been hospitalised with injuries, including at least four in a critical condition.

Mr Rapa told Johnny Blades that in the wake of the shootings, most of the students are staying away from the campus.

KENNETH RAPA: Because they found that if police can go right into the campus and shoot at them, it's unsafe for them to stay in the campus anymore. Most of the students have left the campus already.

JOHNNY BLADES: Police are still on the campus, I understand, still patrolling?

KR: Yes, yes, they are still patrolling and we don't know why.

JB: And yet the University wants the main student body to return to class, what's your response?

KR: After what has happened, the administration and the council has - I don't know if they are being controlled or the decision is from them - but after what has happened on Wednesday, how could you expect students to go back to class, right after they've been traumatised and some students have been hospitalised? The court order that they took to stop the protests too so now it's up to the students to decide on what will happen, because the university administration has got a court order, as I say, to stop the students from boycotting classes and protesting and so on.

JB: What happened on Wednesday has brought it to a new level, but you know some people in the community will be angry and how do you control that? how do you keep everyone calm at this time?

KR: Yes, yes. You know, in PNG when it gets out of hand, the people don't listen anymore. So what I'm trying to do is control my students, and telling them that what happened on Wednesday was not planned and it was an unfortunate event. So we're trying to calm our parents and our families. But that doesn't mean we can control the entire bulk of the population. Some people, they are beyond our reach. So some of the things they are doing are uncontrollable. Like, the most media we are using is Facebook and TV Wan, so it's only centred around the nation's capital and a few urban centres. Most parts of PNG, media is not reaching them. So some parts where we are not able to reach, things are going worser and worser. It's up to the government to decide what's going to happen next for this country because it now it's really getting out of hand, at this time.