The students of the Camping in Palestine They attended the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Valencia during the early hours of this Thursday, May 16, where around five in the morning they set up barricades with tables and chairs to block the entrance to the building for workers, teachers and the rest of the students.
Several people have been mobilized to the Valencian campus, located on Blasco Ibáñez Avenue. Patrols of the National Policeaccompanied by campus security personnel, who are currently evaluating all options to control the situation they have woken up to.
Sources from the Netherlands confirm this University of Valenciathe group of students who spent the night in the center turned away security staff and blocked access to the faculty with furniture from the lobby. An action, the academic institution explains, which takes place a day after members of the camp met the Vice Chancellor and agreed to a new meeting next week.
The UV defends that it has “been in contact with the spokespersons” since the start of the camp and that a group of demonstrators already tried to occupy the rectorate building last Tuesday. Likewise, he claims that “he has no cooperation agreements with universities and the government of Israel and that on February 22 the faculty took a clear position asking for the ceasefire in Gaza “To end the violation of human rights and find a permanent solution to the conflict.”
For its part, the student association Acampada Palestine UV has issued a statement defending this squat as “a response to the active cooperation that this university exercises with companies, institutions and entities that directly participate in Israel's state of genocide and apartheid.”
That is why the demonstrators have decided to close the building and prevent access to private security, employees, teachers and students until the rector's team “decides to take action”. “We do not need more institutionalization, nor months of negotiations, nor bureaucracy. We need real, factual, empirical changes that no longer emphasize how the UV actively participates in perpetuating the greatest genocide currently being experienced,” the student organization said.
They further explain in this letter that “this pressure measure It's not the first and it won't be the last.»: «We are more than a camp, we are a student organization that is ashamed to study at a cooperating university of a genocidal and apartheid state, we are a student organization that will continue, not only with the camp, but also with actions, pressure, negotiations, strikes and demonstrations. “We are a non-conformist youth who will never stop fighting.”
«Forced to act»
Likewise, he points out that after the rectorate rejected any form of communication until the eighth day of the camp and rejected their invitation to the general assembly, “after the systematic silence and the willingness to ignore the fact that a university room was occupied in order to go to the rector's office in person.
That day, they claim there were moments of great tension, with private security preventing them from entering the center during school hours, while police were deployed in the rectorate courtyard to identify several congregants. For this reason, they tried to speak to rector Mavi Mestre again last Wednesday, which did not work, as evidenced by the letter to the press after Thursday's squat.
Strengthening private security
Likewise, they conclude that the UV “systematically defends the small symbolic and rhetorical triumphs it achieves” and that “it is carrying out an image cleansing by the camp, claiming that they are strengthening private security for our security, while this is aimed at a surveillance system that photographs us and takes videos of us every day, including sleeping, and sends them to us WhatsApp groups that we do not know.”
They also criticize that the rectorate “apologizes for the impossibility of terminating contracts, agreements or any form of relationship with companies that actively cooperate with Israel or with Israeli university institutions, as they do not have a favorable legislative framework to carry out such actions feed. ”
“Confronted with the systematic position of ignorance, silence, lack of communication, passivity and image cleansing that the UV and its rectorate team have used, we have come to the conclusion that we forced to increase the pressure level», concludes the campers' statement.