In the last two weeks, more than 160 actions and 125 camps in solidarity with Palestine have been registered in at least 17 countries. The common demand of the students is to divest from companies that support Israel and the Gaza war.
Students at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi forced the US ambassador to India to cancel his official visit to the university with the slogan: “Genocides are not welcome!
Photo by Resistance News Network
Camps have been set up at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, the International Christian University, and Hiroshima University, as well as demonstrations at other Japanese universities.
Students at the University of Manchester (UK) set up the Manchester Resistance Camp for Palestine in Brunswick Park, demanding an end to collaboration with BAE Systems (a British aerospace and defense company) and links with Israeli universities, an end to unethical research and protection for student protesters. Other encampments were set up in Sheffield, Bristol, Newcastle, Warwick and Leeds.
Manchester. Photo by https://twitter.com/ManPalestine
Sheffield. Photo by https://twitter.com/palestine_sccp
Newcastle. Photo by https://twitter.com/LoCNewcastle
In Australia, protest camps were set up at universities in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane.
In France, students at the prestigious Sciences Po in Paris stepped up their protests after the university rejected demands to review its relations with Israel. Several students said they would go on hunger strike. Police entered the Sorbonne to evict activists who had set up tents inside the university, but made no arrests.
Photo by Resistance News Network
The brutal repression unleashed against students in the US has fortunately not been repeated in other countries, at least so far, and is provoking outraged reactions, legal action and measures such as those announced by the Department of Education: Columbia University is indeed under federal investigation for discrimination, harassment and anti-Palestinian racism.
The Columbia University chapter of the American College Teachers Administration also called for a vote of no confidence against President Minouche Shafik and the entire university administration for inviting the NYPD onto campus on the night of 30 April without the approval of the university senate and faculty. The professors condemned the “militarized closure” of the university, and demanded its reopening and the withdrawal of the police, whom Shafik had asked to remain on campus until 17 May.
In the US, however, the crackdown on protests continues, with a total of 2,200 arrests: yesterday, at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, police arrested Jewish studies professor Annelise Orleck and banned her from campus for six months. The history professor was trying to protect students along with other faculty members when they were attacked by police, who made more than 90 arrests that night.
On Thursday, police arrested students at Portland State University, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and the Purchase and New Paltz campuses of SUNY (the State University of New York, the nation’s largest university system). Meanwhile, new solidarity camps have sprung up in recent days at the University of Washington and the University of Toronto.
Sources:
Democracy Now!
Resistance News Network
CU Apartheid Divest
