Students Warned of Police Action

Pro-Palestine protesters are defying orders to pack up encampments at the University of Queensland’s St Lucia campus despite threats of police involvement and disciplinary action against students.

The university on Friday issued both pro-Palestine and Israel camps notices to discontinue due to concerns over student and staff safety, with Chancellor Peter Varghese declaring “anti-Semitism and other hate speech has no place on our campus”.

Camp Shalom protesters packed up on Saturday, but Students for Palestine camp organiser Ella Gutteridge said their members would remain “until there is a real change at this university”.

UQ student and pro-Palestine protester Liam Parry said the camp would continue to call for an open forum with Vice-Chancellor Deborah Terry so their demands could be heard.

“The university has refused every time we have raised this with them to hold such meeting,” he said. “As far as we know the university has not given us an order of eviction ..”

The Courier-Mail understands the university has banned chants of “Out, out Israel out” and the use of the “anti-Semitic stickers” that were plastered on walls during a fiery protest on Thursday.

The university has warned that failure to comply could result in “further disciplinary action”. Students have also been advised to remove posters with “student Intifada” and have restricted a screening of Israelism.

A UQ spokeswoman said “we advised staff and students that the university’s objective is to discontinue the camps as soon as possible”.

“The organisers of the Students for Palestine camp were given prior advice of this communication,” she said. “Our objective is to minimise disruption to university activities, particularly for our students and staff as we head into the upcoming exam period.”

Camp Shalom campaigner Alyssa Peterson welcomed the university’s response.

“We believe this is a gentle push in the right direction,” she said. “The good news is classes do end (for revision period) next Friday, and this to us is the best option we have.”

Ms Peterson said the demands of Camp Shalom had been met – to end both encampments, protect staff and students, and end hate speech and anti-Semitism.

“The university has acknowledged that anti-Semitic statements and stickers and videos were circulated around and that anti-Semitism does not have a place on campus,” she said.

“Therefore, they will be making amendments to policy such as Intifada, to the river and the sea and other forms of hate speech will not be tolerated on campus any longer.”

Demonstrations continue at university campuses across Australia, including at the University of Melbourne and Monash University, where students have been threatened with being expelled.

Deakin University has made a second order to remove encampments, and the Australian National University in Canberra has asked students to vacate encampments.