Pro-Palestinian protesters occupying a building at the University of Melbourne have been told to leave by university officials, who say they\u2019ve \u201ccrossed a line\u201d by entering the building and disrupting class for thousands of students. <\/p>\n
\u201cStudents have a right to protest but that is not a blank check,\u201d said the university\u2019s Deputy Vice Chancellor Michael Wesley in a video message distributed to media on Thursday. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey have crossed a line when they have occupied the Arts West building \u2026 the university\u2019s patience is now at an end.\u201d <\/p>\n
On Wednesday, students at the university were among thousands who rallied across the country to remember the 1948 al-Nakba or \u201ccatastrophe,\u201d when around 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes by armed Jewish groups seeking to establish the state of Israel. <\/p>\n
Dana Alshaer, from UniMelb for Palestine, said after the rally a smaller group of students \u201cindependently\u201d decided to occupy the Arts West building, and others supported them. <\/p>\n
Several banners have since been hung around the room, including one renaming the building \u201cMahmoud\u2019s Hall\u201d after Mahmoud Alnaouq, a Palestinian student who had won a scholarship to study in Australia but was killed in Gaza last October. <\/p>\n
Around 1:30pm on Wednesday, Deputy Vice Chancellor Pip Nicholson addressed the group inside the building on a loudspeaker, telling them their choices that afternoon would have \u201cserious consequences.\u201d <\/p>\n
According to a video posted online, she said: \u201cIn the event that you are not out of here within an hour \u2026 the university will make decisions that will regrettably and unavoidably escalate the tension.\u201d <\/p>\n
On the video, protesters said they wouldn\u2019t leave until the university responded to their demands, which include divesting from weapons companies and condemning Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe come in peace,\u201d a protester said off-camera. \u201cWe came here to learn, to study, to make an impact on the world, and the fees that we\u2019re paying are going towards companies committing an act of genocide right now. Speak to us about that.\u201d <\/p>\n
By Thursday, more than 150 classes had been cancelled, affecting 6,000 students and staff, the university said. Victoria Police said it was monitoring the protest activity and hadn\u2019t been asked to intervene. <\/p>\n
Alshaer denied reports students had blocked the building\u2019s doors and said the university had disabled them. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe people here are opening the doors for anyone, students and uni staff to come in and out whenever they want. It\u2019s not closed. It\u2019s not barricaded,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Since the first tents appeared at universities in Australia over three weeks ago, more students have joined the protest action, demanding the institutions cut ties with weapons companies linked to Israel\u2019s attacks. <\/p>\n
More than 35,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched a war against Hamas after its October 7 attack in southern Israel, according to health officials. The Hamas attack killed 1,200 people and saw some 250 others taken hostage. Around 100 are still in captivity and Hamas\u2019 top leadership is still at large despite the Israeli onslaught. <\/p>\n
Protests in support of both sides have flared around the world, with a widespread pro-Palestinian movement launching demonstrations at university colleges. <\/p>\n
So far, protest sites in Australia have remained relatively peaceful, unlike sister sites in the United States, where police violently evicted some students amid clashes with counter-protesters. <\/p>\n
Other universities in Melbourne and Canberra have put students on notice to leave. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe refuse to obey the directives of a university which is profiting from weapons research during a genocide,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, at least seven student protesters at Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra have received letters from the university telling them to leave the site by the end of Friday. <\/p>\n
In a statement, ANU said it supports students\u2019 right to protest but said \u201cthese activities must be safe and not cause unnecessary harm or damage to our campus or community.\u201d <\/p>\n
One of the letter\u2019s recipients, Nick Reich, said he and others are weighing their options. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to make the decision about how much and to what extent we participate in the protests against the university\u2019s investments in arms companies supplying Israel, but we can be certain that the encampment itself is going to remain set up and will continue to fight this fight,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
In his video message distributed by the University of Melbourne, Wesley called on protesters to \u201cpeacefully end the occupation.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cRed lines have been crossed,\u201d he said. \u201cThe occupation is now seriously disruptive and seriously intimidating for the vast majority of our staff and students who have nothing to do with the protests and are not interested in the protests.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Pro-Palestinian protesters occupying a building at the University of Melbourne have been told to leave by university officials, who say they\u2019ve \u201ccrossed a line\u201d by entering the building and disrupting class for thousands of students. \u201cStudents have a right to protest but that is not a blank check,\u201d said the university\u2019s Deputy Vice Chancellor Michael <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}