Students smash Tonga College as Govt removes striking principal and head tutor [1]
Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 15:30. Updated on Thursday, April 17, 2014 - 17:20.
Offices and cars at Tonga College were smashed this morning, in an outbreak of violence by students, reportedly angered over the government's removal yesterday of their principal and head tutor during Tonga's ongoing civil service strike.
The police have arrested over 200 college students who allegedly smashed windows and property in the administration building and then broke car windows before marching toward town. They were picked up by police buses and brought to the central police station.
At Tonga College a father who was looking for his son said that senior students started smashing up the administration offices of the school during assembly time. Outside the building they damaged the cars of the new acting principal, Kakala Unu, and an administrator from the Ministry of Education before marching off the school compound.
The father, who later found his son among about 100 students who were kept in a room and apparently not involved in the incident, said that the Ministry of Education was insensitive. There should not have been any school today, because senior students were still very upset with the removal of the principal and the head tutor of the college from the compound yesterday afternoon.
It is understood that the Principal, Tu'amelie Faaitu'a, and the Head Tutor, Lopaki Fifita, who are taking part in the ongoing civil service strike, were told to take up new posts at the main education office in Nuku'alofa.
The 100 students who were being kept in a room were released when their parents arrived to take them home.
Tonga College has been a target of attacks by rival school in the past, and it had just been restored, but this latest attack was the first time that it was carried out by the students of Tonga College themselves.
Meanwhile, a police guard has remained at the college, and the few students still attending sporadic lessons at another government school, Tonga High School were sent home while police were also posted at their compound.
See also: Stand up for truth, justice and peace, principal tells student marchers [2]