In the News – May 13, 2024
Students Persist in the Face of Police Attacks on Peaceful Encampments
Demonstration May 12, 2024, denounces police attack on student encampment at University of Calgary
Student encampments calling on universities to disclose their financial dealings with Israel and divest and to call for a ceasefire in the Israeli genocidal assault on Gaza and attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have come under vicious police attack in Alberta and are being threatened with police action on other campuses across the country.
Students at the University of Calgary set up an encampment on May 9. That evening riot police armed with shields, tear gas and flash bang explosives first kettled and then attacked students and their supporters as students were taking down their tents and preparing to leave to comply with police orders. Several people were injured as they were rushed by police. An alumnus who was there to support the students reported that while University administrators stood and watched like cardboard cutouts, the police “smashed into us with their riot shields and batons.” She describes a group that she was with being pepper sprayed, cornered and hit with tear gas and flash bang grenades as they backed away and tried to leave. Five people were arrested for trespassing, three of them issued tickets. All have been released from custody.
The University of Calgary Students’ Union stated that it “unequivocally condemns the [police] action taken against students” and the denial of their right to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression by the University Administration, saying the administration’s request for police action was “an invitation for violence against students.”
The following day the Calgary Student Movement, the organizer of the encampment, held a rally on campus to denounce the violent police attack and to make it clear that students are undeterred and would continue their actions in support of the demands that the university divest from the war industry and condemn Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.
In Edmonton, around 5:00 am on May 11 police cleared an encampment that had been set up at the University of Alberta on May 9, injuring several students in the process. The administration’s call for police action against the students at the University of Alberta came following a statement by the Premier in support of the previous day’s police action against the University of Calgary encampment. Three people were arrested and charges include assaulting a peace officer, trespassing and obstruction.
More than two thousand people rallied on the campus later that afternoon to reaffirm their demands that the university and MacEwan University disclose institutional and financial investments with Israeli institutions and companies and divest from those holdings, condemn the Israeli genocide and call on the Canadian government to end all military contracts with the Zionist state.
Encampment at University of Alberta in Edmonton, May 10, 2024
McGill University is seeking a court order to clear an encampment at the heart of its campus in Montreal, citing sanitary concerns and the “risk of violence and intimidation” as grounds.
The filing cites “fierce verbal exchanges” between protesters and counter-protesters earlier this month, barrels of “human waste” on site, possible fire code breaches such as a single point of exit and the encampment’s potential as a “magnet” for further clashes. A Quebec Superior Court hearing on the injunction is slated to take place May 13.
A representative of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights McGill (SPHR McGill) told the Montreal Gazette that “Despite insisting that they are engaging in quote good faith conversation, it has become very clear now that the McGill administration is not only willing to compromise the student safety, but is actively participating in our harm and silencing” and that McGill has “failed to come back with a concrete proposal” in response to students’ divestment demands. The University also says that the encampment interferes with graduation ceremonies normally held where the encampment is, that it has secured another location which would cost $700,000. SPHR McGill denounced the administration’s stand, saying that McGill would rather spend the $700,000 than meet the protesters’ demands.
Encampment at McGill University in Montreal, May 3, 2024
The just stands taken by the student encampments are receiving broad support from their professors and communities. The students have been undeterred by the threats and intimidation and more encampments have been established. On May 12, encampments began at Dalhousie University in Halifax and the Université de Québec à Montréal, while the students at the University of Waterloo launched theirs today, renaming the Graduate House as Gaza House. They are currently 15 encampments underway across at universities across Canada and Quebec.
Canadian Association of University Teachers’ Statement
The following statement was issued May 10.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) defends the right to free expression and assembly on university and college campuses and condemns those institutions that have or are threatening to have police forcibly remove and arrest peaceful protesters.
Universities and colleges must be places that foster debate, dialogue and free expression. The forcible removal and heavy-handed arrests of peaceful student protesters who pose no demonstrable threat to campus safety are inimical to the mission of post-secondary institutions and contrary to the democratic rights expressed in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
CAUT policy emphasizes that police and campus security services must never be used to constrain academic freedom, free expression or peaceful assembly. The police should be permitted to intervene on campus only where there is a clear and imminent threat of violence, violation of criminal law by an assembly, or a serious violation of the rights of others. Simply asserting that peaceful assemblies are “trespassing” on university or college property is not justification enough for abrogating fundamental democratic rights.
University and college leaders have a positive obligation to defend expressive freedoms and the autonomy of their institutions. They fail in that duty when they capitulate to political and donor pressure to silence debate.
Academic institutions must be places that encourage dialogue in the pursuit of understanding and knowledge. There is no justification for police crackdowns on peaceful assemblies on campus.
Alberta Committee of CPC(M-L) Denounces Violent Police Assault on the University of Calgary Encampment
Encampment set up at University of Calgary, May 9, 2024
The following statement was issued May 10.
Students at both the University of Calgary (U of C) and University of Alberta (U of A) in Edmonton joined students across Canada, the U.S. and other countries, erecting an encampment on May 9. The students erected their tents, listened to speeches, held discussions and organized family activities during the day.
A rally to support the encampment organized by the Calgary Student Movement began at 5:00 pm outside the Quad at the University of Calgary, with people arriving all evening. Around 8:30 pm, a large number of police in riot gear and vans arrived while two University of Calgary administrators stood by. The police blocked off the south side of the campus and lined the street in front of the students, gradually kettling them in.
While campers and their allies attempted to negotiate with the police and the camp was being dismantled, a line of people stood arm in arm affirming the right and duty to peacefully assemble and raise their voices to express their opposition to U.S./Israeli genocide and to demand that the University divest from Israeli-linked investments and end its complicity in apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Despite statements by both the university administration that students were “free to protest” but not to establish encampments, the police launched a violent attack, smashing into the students, their supporters and journalists with their riot shields and batons, and using tear gas, pepper spray, and potentially lethal flash bangs.
As one alumnus who were there to support the students reported, “The level of viciousness and force they came at us with is unheard of in this city and on the campus of a university I paid tuition to and graduated from. The cops were the rioters, the aggressors, the provocateurs while the admin cutouts stood behind the police line and watched as their students and supporters were attacked.”
“We were peaceful. The cops brutally grabbed and threw my friend, a petite woman, a psychologist and mother of one of the students, face down onto the ground, three or four cops on top of her, and arrested her. There were […] several other arrests were made of people trying to defend and protect themselves from this army of soulless goons.”
The police violently attacked people as their tried to leave the area, and arrested around five people. The police have subsequently falsely claimed that they were responding to assaults on police, which simply did not happen.
The Alberta Committee of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) denounces in the strongest terms the arrest, brutal assaults and criminalization of students and members of the community who are demanding an end to U.S./Israeli genocide and that their universities end their complicity in apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
This brutal assault instigated by the university administration and carried out by the Calgary police shows once more that pretenses that governments and public institutions in Canada uphold human rights and democratic norms have been thoroughly smashed.
Freedom of speech and inquiry are critical to learning. University encampments are welcoming places of learning, inquiry, discussion and organizing to make this possible, and as such are vital to the role which society needs the universities to fulfill. Instead the University of Calgary administration unleashed the police on behalf of wealthy private interests to try to smash the work of students, faculty and staff to organize themselves, to investigate and seek truth from facts, to stand with humanity, and to speak out to end the complicity of their institutions in denying the right of the Palestinian people to be. These attacks will not succeed. Such attempts to intimidate, threaten and criminalize the youth and all who stand with the Palestinian people will only strengthen their resolve. To Stand with Palestine Is to Stand with Humanity!
Calgary Student Movement Undeterred Following Police Escalation
Protests to Continue
Demonstration May 12, 2024, denounces police attack on student encampment at University of Calgary
The following statement was issued by the Calgary Student Movement on May 10.
The Calgary Student Movement that launched an encampment at the University of Calgary on Thursday [May 9] is undeterred and will continue its protests Friday following a dramatic police escalation as students were leaving the encampment late Thursday night.
Following two hours of good faith discussions with the police, the students had taken down the encampment when the police suddenly marched on them without warning, injuring many, with some protestors in hospital care on Friday morning. To that point, the students had complied with the police’s call for them to remove their tents and were looking for a way to move the encampment supplies off site safely.
“We were attacked while we were packing up to leave” said Julia, a student organizer. Julia continued that “We were complying with the police demands. They took us completely by surprise. The police aggressiveness totally exacerbated the situation.”
Although the Calgary Police Service continuously stressed the importance of safety and security, their decisions and tactics belied these commitments. Students were forcibly removed from the area, pushed into a nearby pond, journalists were threatened with arrest, and dozens of protestors suffered injuries including punches to the head by police. Despite students dispersing and packing up their tents, the police went on to launch flashbangs and tear gas at the crowd, which produced loud noises and smoke escalating an already-tense atmosphere.
The Calgary Police Service altered their stance numerous times throughout the evening. Initially, the police demanded the evacuation of the entire camp including both students and their tents and belongings; later the police said that the students could stay as long as the tents were taken down and alternately that the tents could stay but the students must leave. “Each shift in the police’s position forced us to reassess our course of action” said Julia. “We had taken down our tents and were negotiating with the police to figure out how to leave when they advanced on us.”
At one point early in the stand-off the police lead a coordinated movement of a line of officers into the encampment as students were voting on whether or not to leave. Local Indigenous leaders were caught up in this sudden display of force, having just come from voicing their support for the encampment, which took place on stolen land.
Police showed up with shields and riot gear to confront what had been a peaceful protest early in the evening. The student protestors had been praying, singing, sharing food, and making signs as hundreds of students and university community members gathered in the quad outside of MacEwan Hall and the Taylor Family Digital Library Thursday afternoon.
While hundreds of encampments at university campuses across Canada and the United States have carried on peacefully for weeks, the University of Calgary and the Calgary Police Service took an unprecedented approach in violently evicting the Calgary Student Movement’s encampment on its first night.
In solidarity with the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, the Calgary Student Movement demands complete and permanent divestment from all corporations involved directly and indirectly in the surveillance, occupation, and murder of Palestinians inboth Gaza and the West Bank.
The full list of the students’ demands is as follows:
1. That the university fully disclose all of its direct and indirect investments, as well the sources of donations made to the university.
2. That the university fully disclose its decision-making process for choosing investments.
3. Complete and continued divestment from corporations that develop military technology in order to profit from wars globally, all corporations that play a role in suppressing Indigenous peoples globally, and all corporations that have links to regimes under investigation by the International Criminal Court.
4. A full academic boycott of institutions complicit in the occupation of Palestine and oppression of Palestinians.
5. The provision of academic and mental health support for Palestinian students.
6. That the university adopt an Anti-Palestinian Racism Definition on campus with a zero-tolerance policy.
7. Recognition of the Palestinian genocide and a public statement condemning the atrocities committed by Israel.
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