DOZENS of pro-Palestine activists occupied a University of Edinburgh building on Monday as part of a protest over its “complicity in genocide”.
Activists occupied campus building 40 George Square as part of the latest action over the past few months.
We told in February how students occupied the Gordon Aikman lecture theatre, also located in George Square, in protest against “investment in Israeli arms and apartheid”.
At the time, the group claims that the university currently holds more than £39 million in companies which are complicit in funding Israel, including £30m in BlackRock, £3.6m in Amazon, £2.6m in Booking.com and £2.2m in Albemarle.
With regard to the latest action, the group pointed out that Arthur Balfour – who charted the Balfour Declaration of 1917 – served as chancellor of the university and that his portrait still hangs in the Playfair Library.
The declaration was a public pledge by Britain in 1917 declaring its aim to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.
Maggie, an undergraduate student at the University of Edinburgh, commented: “We are yet to see any tangible effort made by senior management to engage with the clear and concrete demands of divestment and the severing of research collaborations.
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“As students, staff and members of the wider community, we are directly implicated in the university’s participation in what the ICJ has ruled a plausible genocide.
“Failure to act makes us all complicit, and we refuse to stay silent.”
The action in Edinburgh comes after students in Glasgow also urged bosses to sever all ties with the arms industry by occupying a building on University Gardens for several days.
Cam, a postgraduate student and member of staff at the University of Edinburgh commented: “We have seen that university management wants to create a precedent that the only way to hold them accountable is through their own internal processes.
“These processes ship power from ordinary members of the university. We will not allow university management to silence our voices as it continues its façade of caring for issues of social justice, parading a false narrative of compassion and consideration in response to our demands.”
A spokesperson for the university said: “The continuing violence and loss of life in Palestine is deeply distressing and we understand the strength of feeling on this issue.
"We support the right to take part in lawful, peaceful and respectful protest, however, we do not support protestors preventing access to a building. We are working to relocate any affected teaching and other activities to avoid disruption for the rest of our community.
“We continue to listen to concerns relating to our investments and we are engaging regularly with student groups on this matter.
"We want to be absolutely clear that we do not hold any investments in Israeli arms and we strongly dispute any allegation that we are complicit in the current conflict. We have had a responsible investment policy in place since 2016, which applies to all of our investments and explicitly excludes investment in controversial armaments.
"We are a signatory of the UN-supported Principles for Responsible Investment, which holds the University accountable to a collective commitment placing environmental, social and governance factors at the heart of investment decisions.”
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