Oxf and Camb students launch pro-Palestinian occupation of uni lawns
Oxford and Cambridge students kicked off occupying lawns with pro-Palestinian camps as part of a series of protests in United States universities
International: Oxf and Camb students launch pro-Palestinian occupation of uni lawns. As per the British media, tents sprang up outside the University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum on Monday morning. The organisers claimed was “a disturbing hoard of artefacts stolen from colonised peoples across the world”.
On the lawn of King’s College at the University of Cambridge, students said they had set up an encampment because the University “supports Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza”.
Organisers Cambridge for Palestine posted a video on X, formerly known as Twitter, of their members marching onto the famous lawn with tents, supplies and sleeping bags, saying they “refuse to sit idly by” while the university “supports Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza”.
Read More: Columbia University Suspends Protesters Amid Gaza War Demonstrations
At Oxford, camp leaders have pinned up a board with a list of six demands to university chiefs, including to “boycott Israeli genocide, apartheid and occupation”, to “disclose all finances”, “stop banking with Barclays”, help rebuild Gaza’s education system and “divest from Israeli genocide, apartheid and occupation”.
They added in a statement: “There is no university in the history of human civilisation that is more complicit in violence, dispossession, and the building of destructive colonial empires than the University of Oxford.”
Oxf and Camb students launch pro-Palestinian occupation of uni lawns
Former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was confronted by pro-Palestine protesters during a speech at the University of Oxford in England this week, as college campuses in the US continue to be rocked by huge anti-war student demonstrations.
Pelosi was participating in a debate at the university’s Oxford Union on Thursday when her speech was interrupted by two demonstrators who stood up and held Palestinian flags in front of the veteran politician.
In advance of Pelosi’s appearance at the prestigious debating hall, over one hundred students had gathered outside the venue for a demonstration calling for an end to Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians amid diplomatic and military support from the US.
Protesters from the UK group ‘Youth Demand’ walked in front of Pelosi after she took to the podium and held up Palestinian flags for some 20 minutes, until five police officers entered the venue and removed them, according to Oxford’s student newspaper Cherwell.
Pelosi’s speech at times was reportedly drowned out by the sounds of pro-Palestine protesters outside who were calling for the US to cut military aid to Israel and for Oxford University authorities to stop “harassing” students over the protests, according to the report.