Pro-Palestine University Student Demonstrations Spread to Australia

Canberra, MINA – Pro-Palestine student demonstrations at universities have spread to Australia amid police raids on campuses in the US.

According to Anadolu Agency, students and activists are camping at major universities, including in Sydney, as demands for divestment from Israel grow louder.

Solidarity camp at the University of Sydney said students and Palestine activists across Sydney on Friday “successfully” defended “Gaza Solidarity Encampment from a Zionists demonstration.”

A huge number of pro-Palestine demonstrators gathered on Friday but the situation across the campuses is said to be peaceful unlike the US, where pro-Israel groups, as well as police, launched raids on pro-Palestine encampment sites and the demonstrations turned violent.

“We stand on the side of the Palestinians, and we will not be intimidated,” said the University of Sydney Gaza Solidarity Camp on X.

The students and activists on the encampment sites are seen engaged in different activities, including songs and teach-in programs during which they are informing visitors about the struggle of Palestinians.

“The Palestine movement is a fight for peace for humanity,” said the camp, sharing hashtags of #freegaza #freepalestine #stopfundinggenocide.

Pro-Palestine student university demonstrations in Australia prop up as the US saw more than 150 Gaza solidarity encampments popping up throughout the country.

More than 2,000 people, including students, have been arrested by the US authorities during the pro-Palestine demonstrations.

There have been student protests in Indonesia, Canada, and France as well.

“An excellent turnout at the Sydney University encampment, resisting intimidation and demanding the university end its complicity with Israel’s genocide,” said Jessica Whyte, about demonstrations held at the University of Sydney.

Whyte, a philosophy professor at the University of New South Wales, also shared photos of pro-Palestine demonstrations at the encampment site on her X account.

Nick Riemer, a linguistics professor at the University of Sydney, said the varsity vice-chancellor Mark Scott has given a “public commitment” to allow the pro-Palestine encampment to stay on the campus.

“Make no mistake: we will hold him to it. It is the absolute, bare minimum that he should be doing,” said Riemer, a leader of Australia’s National Tertiary Education Union. (T/RE1/P2)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)