One student and one teacher were shot at Juba Day Secondary School in Hai Commercial when police opened fire during a student protest. Many teachers and students were arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

Shooting began around 11:30 a.m. after students held a protest at a construction site on the grounds of Juba Day Secondary School. According to one witness, the students were throwing stones at the police before the shooting began.

A girl named Agnes, who suffered bullet wounds in both knees, told Radio Tamazuj that she had sheltered inside a classroom while the protest was ongoing. She was hit when policemen decided to shoot into the classroom, she said. She said that when she was shot she did not at first realize it but then she collapsed.

A teacher called Alafi Michael told Radio Tamazuj: “I am wounded. I am wounded. I was trying to stop the students from stoning the policemen. Then the students were really coming seriously facing the policemen. Then policemen started shooting. Then I got myself down with serious pain. I realized blood now pouring out of my leg.”

“I was trying to control the students, not to carry any chaos. This is what I can tell you,” he added.

Another girl student lost consciouness during the events and was taken to Juba Teaching Hospital where she was given intravenous drip. One of her caretakers, also a student, recounted that the origins of the incident were with a construction project to expand a private medical clinic. Juba Day School students were told that a piece of land belonging to the school would be given to a private hospital. When people brought a tractor to clear the land the headmaster asked the workers why they were clearing the land. The headmaster was unable to learn from them why. 

Workers brought cement yesterday. Students demanded to know what they were going to do on the land, which they had been using as a football pitch. Workers again came today with wheelbarrows and other tools.

The headmaster went to the state Minister of Education to find out what the plan was for the land but even the minister denied knowledge of what was going on there. Students then raised a letter to the minister but they received no response.

“A certain investor has come and he wants to construct an international hospital,” said Joseph Kejo Abraham, the deputy headmaster of the school. “So this area, the school administration and then the students they know that the area belongs to the school.”

The students were irritated by the response from the minister that the area had been approved for the investor. Then they went today to prevent work at the construction site. Immediately police arrived and started opening fire. They shut themselves in a room. Police burst into the room and shot a business teacher called Michael Alafi and a girl called Agnes.

According to one of the plainclothes security personnel who was on the scene during the confrontation, the forces involved in the operation were the Central Equatoria Police in coordination with the CID.