STORY: :: Oxford University students set up a pro-Palestinian
encampment as campus protests spread to Europe
:: May 7, 2024
:: Oxford, England
:: Anna Serafidiou, Pro-Palestinian protestor
“It’s one thing to put out a statement and acknowledge at the very bare minimum that this is a humanitarian crisis. There are people starving, children starving, all of the 600,000 children in Rafah right now are all malnourished and starving – this is a UNICEF statistic, and I think it’s the bare minimum to acknowledge that. Besides this, the UK is providing military aid and financial aid to Israel to continue this massacre. So without tangible action in terms of stopping this aid and allowing this to continue happening, it is not enough just to say this is a bad thing and end it there. I think words are not enough in this moment and that’s all that’s been done really well.”
The students, joined by faculty members, erected dozens of brightly coloured tents on the lawns outside the relatively dull, yellow, 19th-century neo-Gothic Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
The students also listed their demands on a poster stating they wanted the universities to “disclose all finances, divest from Israeli genocide apartheid and occupation” and ‘overhaul their investment policies and support Palestinian-led rebuilding of education in Gaza.
The protests in Britain are however a stark contrast to the jarring scenes from the U.S. over the past couple of weeks, where riot police wielding batons and flash-bang grenades dispersed and arrested hundreds of protesters.
Source Agencies
