Paraguay students lay siege to university building over ‘corrupt’ president

Students in Paraguay held dozens of university faculty and staff hostage on Tuesday, calling for the president of one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious academic institutions to resign over allegations of corruption.

The students released 37 university board members overnight after a tense, five-hour standoff with riot police at the Universidad Nacional de Asuncion (UNA), despite pledges to keep them hostage until the university president, Froilan Peralta, stepped down.
Peralta is under investigation after it was revealed that his secretary was being paid as a full-time faculty member, and that her mother, sister and cousin were also collecting professor pay-checks even though they had no teaching responsibilities at the school.
The president was also under fire for allegations he collects a monthly salary of around €8,300, which includes compensation for university courses he has long stopped teaching.
Board members were allowed to leave the student-besieged campus after they agreed to reconvene in six days in order to hold a vote on Peralta’s ouster and set a date for an election to replace him.
‘Gangrene’
The protest began as a relatively small rally outside the university president’s office on Monday, but steadily grew over a 24-hour period to include as many as 2,000 outraged students calling for Peralta’s resignation, according to Paraguay daily Ultima Hora.
The standoff began after the students blocked university board members – including department heads – from leaving the building after a meeting over Peralta’s request for a temporary leave. Administrative personnel were also briefly held captive before students let them go.
“Nobody enters or leaves until Peralta resigns,” AFP quoted student leader Arturo Cano as saying at the height of the face-off, which included dozens of riot police who surrounded the campus, according to Ultima Hora.
Local reporters praised Paraguay justice official Julio Ortiz for negotiating a peaceful resolution to the situation.
Corruption is rampant in landlocked Paraguay. Only Venezuela and Haiti have higher levels of corruption in Latin America, according to Transparency International.

Pope Francis, the first pontiff to hail from the Americas, drew attention to corruption among public officials in Paraguay during a speech in the capital of Asuncion in July, calling it the “gangrene of the people”.