On 17 August, the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment made the decision to pack down their tents, transitioning their campaign against the ANU’s ties with the Palestinian genocide away from the physical camp and launching a new action group through which to continue their protest, called ‘ANU For Palestine’. Students of the Encampment stood in the rain, and made the announcement during the weekly Garema place Palestine rally, promising to be back.
Students attending classes on Monday morning would have passed by an empty space outside the A.D Hope Building where the protesters had been established after moving from Kambri Lawns. This marked the end of the encampment’s 110 day presence on campus, making it the longest running Gaza solidarity encampment in the country.
In a thread posted on X on 17 August, Associate Professor of Public Policy at ANU’s Crawford School, Elise Klein, noted the decampment of the protesters, praising involved students for their efforts over the past few months, and soberly explaining the need for further clarification in the ANU’s SRI announcement while calling on the university to divest fully and immediately.
In a statement released by the encampment on 19 August, titled “ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment’s new beginning”, the group acknowledged the achievement of the movement in pressuring the ANU to revise its Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) policy and commit to ceasing investment in “biological weapons, chemical weapons, cluster munitions, nuclear weapons, anti-personnel mines, as well as civilian small arms”.
However, the statement highlighted “countless intimidation and repression tactics by the ANU’s leadership team… in which the ANU has called the police on us, censored us, and lied about us”. Significantly, it attributed the decampment at least partially to growing safety concerns over university instruction that the campers “are now not allowed to turn on a single light at night time.” According to the group, “This decision is completely arbitrary, and has made it completely untenable for our protest movement to continue in the form of an encampment.”
Despite acknowledging pride in the ANU’s SRI revision, it being the only Australian university to have thus far made this decision, the group maintained steadfast that “this is not enough”, and that the movement will continue to agitate for “full and immediate divestment from the state of Israel as well as the military industrial complex which enables its ongoing occupation and genocide of the Palestinian people.”
One ANU for Palestine student stated in the release that “The fight for a free Palestine and for our university to divest and end its complicity in genocide is more than just tents and gazebos, it’s a movement that we will continue.” Another upheld that the encampment “has now metamorphosed into something more than a location, into a fluid movement of a people”.
Woroni’s coverage of the protests and counter-protests will continue in the coming weeks.
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ANU Student Safety and Wellbeing Team
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