18/09/2025
September 18, 2025
LINSU Condemns Arbitrary Arrest of Over Eight (8) University of Liberia Students & Calls On the GOL, & University Authorities to Settle Faculty Demands to Ensure the Reopening of School.
The Liberia National Students’ Union (LINSU) categorically condemns the barbaric and unlawful arrest
of over eight (8) students of the University of Liberia by the Liberia National Police (LNP). These arrests,
carried out under the darkness of night through a shameful manhunt, were based on nothing more than the
students’ participation in a peaceful protest on campus.
This reckless display of state power represents not
only an attack on students but a dagger thrust into the very heart of democracy under the Mr. Joseph
Nyuma Boakai Unity Party led government.
Peaceful protest is not a crime. It is a constitutional right, a democratic entitlement, and a noble tradition
of resistance through which oppressed people everywhere demand their dignity. By criminalizing protest
and hunting students as though they were fugitives, the Liberia National Police has revealed itself not as a
protector of the people but as an instrument of intimidation, a predator unleashed against their own
people.
This naked aggression is an insult to the ideals of democracy, a stain upon the government that
commands it, and a warning sign of creeping authoritarianism that LINSU and all other well-meaning
Liberian will resist with every ounce of our strength.
We remind the government that the students of the University of Liberia are not criminals. They are
victims of a broken system—condemned to overcrowded classrooms, crumbling infrastructure, unpaid
faculty, and the mockery of an institution starved by the very regime that claims to value education.
Arresting students will not repair laboratories. Handcuffing them will not settle salary arrears. Dragging
young people to prison cells will not reopen the gates of the university. What the police have done is not
in defense of public order, but the enforcement restraint against democratic dissent.
The real crime lies not in the voices raised by students but in the negligence that has reduced the
University of Liberia to a shadow of its promise. The Faculty Association remains locked in disputes
because their labor is not respected. The classrooms remain empty because the government has chosen
patronage and bureaucracy over investment in the future. The University of Liberia—Liberia’s flagship
institution—is sinking, and those who dare to call attention to its collapse are being hunted like prey. This
is not law enforcement; it is lawlessness, weaponized against students of the University of Liberia, more
particularly of the Vanguard Student Unification Party (SUP).
LINSU warns, in the clearest possible terms, that this aggression will not go unanswered. The
government must immediately and unconditionally release the over eight (8) students unduly in police
custody. The Liberia National Police must cease its disgraceful act of swindling partisan loyalty,
campaign of intimidation, and apologize to the students and the Liberian people for this disgusting act of
betrayal of trust.
Meanwhile, LINSU is calling on the University administration to swiftly resolve its dispute with the
University of Liberia Faculty Association (ULFA) and ensure the reopening of school.
What is happening at the University is clearly vivid, and audible, and the University authority should be
working with every aggrieved student, government stakeholders, private sector partners, and donors to
explore solutions to the problems, and not empowering other groupings to embark an endeavor of
subversionary propaganda. Such an act will only deepen the contradictions, radicalize the campus, and
ignite a resistance far greater than what the state imagines it can contain.
Let it be known: the student movement has outlived dictatorships, military juntas, and pseudo-democratic
regimes. We have faced bullets, tear gas, imprisonment, and death, and yet we have not been broken. We
will not be broken now. If the government believes that manhunts and midnight arrests will break the
spirit of Liberian students, it has learned nothing from history.
The path forward is not the path of repression. The path forward is investment, dialogue, respect, and the
recognition that the University of Liberia is the foundation upon which Liberia’s future must be built. To
attack its students is to attack the future of the nation itself. To continue on this path is to risk not merely
the anger of students but the condemnation of history.
In conclusion, LINSU is giving the government of Liberia a 48 hours’ non-negotiable ultimatum for the
unconditional release of all arrested students, and calls on all progressive forces, students, faculty, civil
society, and the wider Liberian public—to stand in solidarity against this rising tide of repression.
Done and issued by:
6thPost-War National Executive Committee
LINSU
