2,000+ students arrested at protests calling for divestment from companies implicated in human rights violations
Video still of University of Ottawa encampment by CTV.
Encampments are being organized on campuses across the United States and Canada in response to the Israeli military assault in which at least 34,596 Palestinians have been killed and 77,816 more injured.
The encampments have highlighted divestment as a demand.
The Columbia University Apartheid Divest group wrote in its list of five demands: “Divest all of Columbia’s finances, including the endowment, from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine.”
The Associated Press also notes “the demands vary from campus to campus [but] among them: Stop doing business with military weapons manufacturers that are supplying arms to Israel.”
More specifically, students at the University of Texas at Dallas are calling on the university administration to divest from five companies: Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Corp and Raytheon Technologies.
And The Yale Daily News notes that while only 0.3 percent of Yale’s $40.7 billion endowment fund is publicly disclosed, “within the known 0.3 percent, there is evidence that Yale invests more than $110,000 in military weapons manufacturers, including companies that directly contract with the Israeli government and military.”
Similar demands are being made by students in Canada.
McGill University, Montreal
CBC has reported: “Some of McGill’s investments that have drawn the ire of students and others for years, well before the latest Israel-Hamas war, include Lockheed Martin, a weapons manufacturer with direct ties to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and Safran, a French air defence company.” The Gazette further specifies: “Lockheed Martin, in which McGill has invested just under $520,000, as well as Thales SA ($1.3 million) and Safran ($1.5 million), all defence contractors.”
University of Ottawa
The Ottawa Citizen has reported: “Activists who addressed the crowd on Monday [April 29] said the group would be on campus every day from noon to nighttime to protest several issues, including the university’s relationship with Scotiabank. Scotiabank has been targeted by protesters in Canada since the start of the Israel-Hamas war for its investments in Elbit Systems Ltd., an Israeli arms firm.”
University of Toronto
A petition on the University of Toronto Divest website notes: “We, the undersigned call upon U of T to appropriately respond to the violations of international law, human rights abuses, and war crimes committed by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories by immediately divesting from Northrop Grumman, Hewlett Packard, and Lockheed Martin. Furthermore, we call upon the U of T to refrain from investing in all companies involved in violations of international law around the world.”
Criminal liability for universities
Common Dreams now reports: “As U.S. campus protests and the aggressive police response galvanized a growing number of British students to set up their own encampments at universities across the country on Wednesday [May 1], a legal group informed dozens of higher education institutions in the U.K. that their investments in weapons manufacturers could leave them open to criminal liability stemming from human rights violations by Israel.”
That article adds: “The International Center of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) warned officers at 82 universities that if they have profited from investments in companies including Elbit Systems, Caterpillar, and BAE Systems, their financial holdings may be linked to weapons used by the Israel Defense Forces in its current escalation against Gaza.”
Citing Article 25 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, ICJP director Tayab Ali says: “Aiding, abetting and in any other way assisting in the commission of a war crime including ‘providing the means for its commission’ is a war crime.”
While universities are being cautioned about their criminal liability, it is students who are being criminalized. More than 2,000 students have been arrested over the past two weeks at encampments on US campuses.
CADSI and CANSEC
A similar caution could be made to universities in Canada, including in relation to the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI) organized CANSEC weapons show this coming May 29-30 in Ottawa.
The CANSEC weapons show is sponsored by the same arms companies that are being identified by the students encampments including: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Thales, BAE Systems, and Hewlett Packard. And while one now has to register with CADSI to access its list of exhibitors, it has included: Israel Representatives, Elbit Systems Ltd., General Dynamics, Raytheon and Safran.
Notably, members of CADSI include 17 colleges and universities: Algonquin College, College of the North Atlantic, Dalhousie University, Durham College, Fanshawe College, Georgian College, Lakehead University, Nova Scotia Community College, Ontario Tech University – ACE, Queen’s University, Red River College, Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies, Saskatchewan Polytechnic, The Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, The University of Alberta, University of British Columbia, and the University of Waterloo.
The CADSI Board of Directors also includes Peter Devlin, the President of Fanshawe College in London, Ontario.
We continue to follow this.
Image: ILPS Canada Instagram post.
Peace Brigades International supports the demand for an immediate ceasefire and continues to call “on the international community to suspend the supply of arms to Israel and the armed groups involved in the conflict.”
Further reading: More than 800 human rights defenders killed in Palestine over the past six months (PBI-Canada, April 26, 2024).
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