Students under scrutiny

The revelation that one of the Ansar-ul-Sharia Pakistan militants behind the assassination attempt on MQM leader Khawaja Izharul Hassan on Eid day was a student at Karachi University has led to another round of soul-searching about radicalisation on our campuses. Clearly there is an issue here and something needs to be done about militant groups recruiting from colleges and universities. Any solution, however, needs to be proportionate to the problem and should not impinge on academic freedom. There are reports that officials at Karachi University are going to hand over student records to intelligence agencies so that any possible militants can be flushed out, although KU Vice Chancellor Muhammad Ajmal Khan has, in his press talk on Friday, said that no final decision has been taken on the matter yet. Presumably the data handed over would include information like classes taken by students or books they have checked out of the university library. This raises issues of the privacy rights of the nearly 30,000 students enrolled at Karachi University. Giving their personal information to the state would create an opportunity for unscrupulous elements to start targeting students for their political views and activities, even if unconnected to militancy. As it is, political space at our campuses is minimal due to the ban on student unions. Should students now live in fear of their records being handed over to law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, they would be even less likely to become politically engaged.

There is always a danger of such exercises turning into a witch hunt. A student may be taking a lot of classes on terrorism and reading material related to militancy out of academic interest but could end up being tarred as a militant sympathiser. Such curtailment of liberties also has a bad habit of quickly spreading. Today it is Karachi University that is giving up student data; tomorrow it could be every other university in the country. The dangers of allowing the state to compile dossiers on all university students should be obvious enough. This doesn’t mean our law-enforcement personnel shouldn’t be taking action against militants on campus. But instead of treating every student as a potential militant, they should be focusing their intelligence efforts on militant groups themselves. Infiltrating and effectively surveilling them would be a more effective way of flushing out any students in their midst. As the Karachi University vice chancellor has said, there is no reason for all students to be under suspicion because of a few bad apples. A more positive way of limiting the appeal and reach of militant groups on campus would be to allow political expression to flourish. The more options students are given, the easier it will be to marginalise the influence of extremist viewpoints.