The University of Melbourne (UoM) is threatening 21 students with expulsion for taking part in the Palestine solidarity encampment and holding a sit-in at Mahmoud's Hall — renamed from Arts West to honour 25-year-old Palestinian Mahmoud Alnaouq who wanted to study international relations at UoM. He was killed by an Israeli airstrike last October. University management has also been found to have potentially breached privacy laws by tracking students, using WiFi and surveillance cameras Isaac Nellist spoke to Reham Elzeiny, from UniMelb for Palestine, about management's threats.
Please describe the Palestine solidarity encampment at UoM and the sit-in at Mahmoud's Hall. What have you won? We started the solidarity encampment on April 25 on the South Lawn. It was in place for about three weeks and, in that time, we saw a huge amount of growth and support.
The community really got behind us. We had teach-ins and food being brought by the community and it became a really beautiful activist space. The goal of the encampment was to pressure the university to cut ties with weapons manufacturers, particularly those involved in the genocide in Gaza.
After three weeks, we held a rally, and an autonomous group of students decided to start a sit-in at the Arts West building, which we renamed Mahmoud's Hall. That lasted about a week: people had tents and marquees inside the foyer and open spaces on the ground floor. When we were on the lawn, we had not received much of a response from the university.
So the sit-in was a way of drawing more attention to our protest and letting the university know that we were serious. During the sit-in, we had ongoing negotiations with the university and, by the end of the week, we agreed to [their offer of] disclosure. This meant the university agreed to disclose all of its ties to weapons manufacturers, particularly research collaborations and partnership, in exchange for us packing down the sit-in and leaving the building.
The...
Isaac Nellist , Reham Elzeiny.
