The information was provided to Lusa by the president of the Angolan Students' Movement (MEA), Francisco Teixeira, who said that three students, including a pregnant woman, were arrested during Wednesday's protests and are due to stand trial this Thursday.
According to Francisco Teixeira, the group of 57 final year students held a vigil on Tuesday night in front of the UMA facilities in the centre of the capital and demonstrated on Wednesday against the ban on them being prevented from participating in the diploma awarding ceremony.
In a statement released on Wednesday, the UMA management said that it had detected serious irregularities involving a considerable number of final year students, namely fraud in the payment of monthly fees and improper alteration of grades, and had decided to suspend the students involved while the disciplinary process is ongoing.
The finalists, who refute the accusations and demand evidence from UMA, decided to go ahead with their protests, but were stopped by the national police, who were called to the private higher education institution and ended up arresting three students.
Photos and videos are circulating on social media showing the intervention of police officers detaining a student who had fallen to the ground amid shouts and protests against the attacks.
“We believe that the police need to treat the students with respect, we believe that all that aggression was unnecessary, it could have been avoided with dialogue, we hope for their release because they did not commit any crimes”, the president of MEA told Lusa, calling for the release of the three detained students.
According to Francisco Teixeira, the finalist students, even after defending their dissertation and participating in the rehearsals, were prevented from participating in the aforementioned award ceremony, “without any evidence” of the accusations made against them.
UMA “came to cancel a process without any evidence, was unable to prove it in a meeting, asked for five more days, and so they [the students] are right to protest, due to the lack of evidence from the institution”, he added.
The sudden suspension of the students’ participation in that ceremony, he noted, frustrated their expectations and “created outrage and indignation”.
“It was a normal reaction, because they felt wronged”, justified the student leader.
In the statement, UMA also reiterates its “unwavering commitment” to academic integrity and to promoting a teaching environment based on honesty, humility and respect for institutional norms.
