STATEMENT: USYD SHUTS DOWN GAZA SOLIDARITY ENCAMPMENT, THE STRUGGLE FOR PALESTINE AND DIVESTMENT CONTINUES ????????
In the 2 months since we initiated the USyd Gaza Solidarity Encampment, it has electrified Palestine activism on campus. We’re incredibly proud of our achievement in involving hundreds of new and diverse students in activism for Gaza, and amounting significant pressure on the University. We are also heartened that the NTEU passed a motion calling for similar demands to our encampment. Our encampment was not only a beacon for student activists on our campus; it inspired student activists around the country to set up their own protest camps, in a nationwide campaign which put Israel’s genocide in Gaza back into the centre of Australian politics and revealed the many ways corporate and government institutions, including our universities, are complicit in this genocide. It also centered the BDS movement as the way forward; boycotts, divestment and sanctions are a vital part of the Free Palestine movement.
Leading up to Sunday the 16th of June, University of Sydney management has started shutting down the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. For weeks the camp has been issued cease and desist letters, two students have been suspended, security has removed tents, and prevented the Palestine Action Group protest from entering university grounds on Sunday. As such the camp is closing as of today, and over the course of this week people will be retrieving their belongings.
Management at Sydney University was consistently hostile to our encampment. Their political and material links to Israel and the weapons companies they supply are deeply entrenched. They have so far refused our central demand that they cut all of these ties to genocide. Instead, they have attempted to resist our movement with empty deals - deals we have rejected as the PR spin that they are.
Despite Mark Scott boasting to the media that he was generously respecting our right to peacefully protest, university management have in fact taken a repressive approach to the encampment from the start, moving unjust disciplinary cases against multiple activists and groups involved in the encampment.
Despite orders from the university, our campaign for boycott, divestment, and sanctions is only just beginning. We will not be pausing for a second in the struggle to stop this genocide and free Palestine. While no longer at the encampment, we will be taking protest action throughout the break, targeting university management and the murderous weapons companies they work with like Thales, and we urge everyone reading this to throw yourself into our ongoing campaign.
We will be returning to campus next semester to take our fight to management even harder, with a historic Student General Meeting to demand that the university cut all its ties with Israel. We want to see the thousands of students who have supported our activism out in force to demonstrate that students reject our uni’s bloodstained links to genocide and imperialism. We need as many people as possible to help us build the SGM - so please message our pages to chat about getting involved!
Let’s continue to organise, to heap pressure on these institutions, and to fight for a liberated Palestine, from the river to the sea!
Long live the student intifada! ????????
USyd Gaza Solidarity Camp.