South Sudanese university students who took over the country’s embassy in Cairo about two months ago are still living inside the embassy with few supplies of food and other essentials.
Students participating in the two months-long sit-in at the embassy have suffered shortages of food and drinking water. They are demanding the South Sudanese government pay them living allowances that they say were earlier promised to them.
Kot Maker, one of the student leaders told Radio Tamazuj that the students “are still sleeping inside the embassy premise and life is so bad.”
He pointed out that the minister of education “has failed so far to respond positively to students’ demands therefore we will not leave the embassy to operate until our allowances are fully paid to us.”
The South Sudanese Foreign Ministry admitted in mid-July that its Cairo Embassy was overrun by South Sudanese university student protesters who are living inside the embassy premises refusing to leave until the government provides them with living allowances.
Mawien Makol Ariik, foreign ministry spokesman, told Radio Miraya at the time, “You know the staff cannot come to the embassy because the students have occupied the embassy and they are in the entire embassy premises.”
Separately, the Higher Education Minister John Gai Yoh earlier wrote a letter to South Sudan’s ambassador in Egypt claiming the government does not have enough money to meet the students’ demands.
The letter recommended that the students who cannot afford to stay in Cairo should end their studies and return home to South Sudan. It asked the ambassador to convey this position to the students, who responded by rejecting the letter and refusing to leave the embassy.
According to the student leader, South Sudan’s ambassador to Egypt left the country several weeks ago.
Courtesy Photo/Kot Maker: Student protesters inside the Cairo embassy in July 2015