London, Feb 11, IRNA – Protesting students are flying the Palestinian flag at Glasgow University in the latest student sit-in that has swept UK campuses following the latest Israeli massacres in Gaza.
Students, who have occupied a room on the top floor of the computer science building since Monday, were pledging to continue their protest, demanding that Glasgow University sever all links with Israeli organizations.
They insist they will not move until the university accedes to a list of demands, including the severing of alleged funding links with the arms manufacturer BAE Systems, the cancellation of a contract with Eden Springs, a water cooler company listed on the Tel Aviv stock exchange and the creation of a scholarship program for Palestinian students.
“Last week we handed in a petition with over 1,000 signatures, but that got us nowhere. So we are staying here indefinitely,” Raymid Kiernan, a fourth-year geography student, told The Scotsman newspaper Wednesday.
A similar sit-in protest was staged at Glasgow’s Strathclyde University, but which ended after the institution’s authorities agreed to some demands.
Student demonstrations have been held on more that 20 university campuses across the UK in what has been described as the reawakening of the Spirit of 1968, at the height of tumultuous protests against the US war in Vietnam.
Beginning with a 24-hour occupation at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) on 13 January, the sit-ins spread across the country.
Occupations have been held at such famous universities as Oxford, Cambridge, Warwick, the London School of Economics and King’s College London.
The initial impetus for the mass protests were triggered by the extent of Israel’s slaughter of more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 400 children and more than 100 women, but has since been spread to other issues.
Among the demands of British students are disinvestment in the arms trade; the promise to provide scholarships for Palestinian students; a pledge to send books and unused computers to Palestine; and to condemn Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Last weekend, students gathered at Birkbeck College in London to draw up a national strategy and included speeches from leaders in the Stop the War movement, such as former Labour cabinet minister Tony Benn, George Galloway MP and Jeremy Corbyn MP. There has also been an Early Day Motion tabled in Parliament in support of campus activism.
At the end of February, students from across the country will gather for a national demonstration calling for the abolition of tuition fees, an event that organizers say has rocketed in size following the success of the occupations over Gaza.
Fran Legg, one of the students to set up the first Stop the War Coalition at Queen Mary, a research-focused university in London, said that “action on this scale among students hasn’t been seen since the Sixties and Seventies.”
“This is going to go down in history as a new round of student mobilization and it will set a precedent. Gaza is the main issue at the moment, but we’re looking beyond the occupation; we’re viewing it as a springboard for other protests,” Legg said.
“For the first time, you’ve got students getting principals to the negotiating table, saying they don’t want their tuition fees funding war. Everybody wants to know where their money is going,” she said.