Students set up pro-Palestinian encampment protest at University of Toronto

TORONTO — Tents, banners and flags cropped up at the centre of the University of Toronto’s downtown campus early Thursday as students set up an encampment to call on the institution to cut its ties with Israel over the ongoing war in Gaza.

The students said they breached a fence that had been installed around an area on campus known as King’s College Circle around 4 a.m. to establish their protest encampment in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

They said they were joining students at other universities in the United States and Canada in setting up encampments to call on their schools to disclose their ties with the Israeli government and divest from Israeli companies.

“We have many, many students, many undergraduate students, graduate students from all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of religions … all here. We also have a number of faculty who are supporting us,” Erin Mackey, one of the protest organizers, said at the encampment on Thursday morning.

“We are all standing together in solidarity, demanding that our university, that we all attend, that we are all part of it, is no longer complicit in this genocide.”

The International Court of Justice is investigating whether Israel has committed acts of genocide in the ongoing war in Gaza, with any ruling expected to take years. Israel has rejected allegations of wrongdoing and accused the court of bias.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza was launched after Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 men women and children hostage. The Israeli offensive has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.

The war has wreaked vast destruction and brought a humanitarian disaster with several thousand Palestinians in northern Gaza facing imminent famine, according to the United Nations.

Mackey, who is with the group U of T Occupy for Palestine, said students had occupied a building outside the university president’s office a few weeks ago and eventually were able to meet with him but were not satisfied with the outcome of that discussion.

“I have spent four years here and spent a lot of money on tuition and I’m graduating, which is really exciting. But … there are many, many students who are just like me (in Gaza) who should be graduating and celebrating, but unfortunately they are unable to do so,” Mackey said.

By late Thursday morning, dozens of tents could be seen set up at the centre of King’s College Circle – which protesters said they were now calling the People’s Circle for Palestine – with a few police cars and private security vehicles seen parked nearby.

Some held up pro-Palestinian banners and signs were put up in trees. Some people were seen sitting together on tarps laid out on the grass, while others walked around. Several wore keffiyehs, a checkered scarf typically worn in Arab cultures that has come to symbolize, in part, solidarity with Palestinians.

Mackey said protesters had been told they would have to vacate their encampment by 10 p.m. but the group had no plans to leave.

A written notice given to protesters said the university respects its members right to assemble and protest but unauthorized activities such as encampments “are considered trespassing.”

In a written statement Thursday morning, the university said its campuses remain open and noted that protest activities “must not interfere with the ability of students, faculty, librarians and staff to learn, teach, research and work.”

“Our preference is to start with dialogue,” the university wrote. “Those who contravene university policy or the law risk the consequences set out in various laws and policies such as the Code of Student Conduct, which could include suspension.”

The new encampment at the University of Toronto comes as pro-Palestinian activists have pitched their tents on campuses across the country in recent days, including encampments at McGill University in Montreal, the University of Ottawa, Western University in London, Ont., and the University of British Columbia.

In the United States, campuses have seen a wave of protests in recent weeks linked to the Israel-Hamas war.

A Quebec judge rejected a request for an injunction to stop the protest at McGill on Wednesday after two students at the university had asked Quebec Superior Court to order protesters to move at least 100 metres from school buildings, saying their presence had created an environment of aggression and left them feeling unsafe.

Justice Chantal Masse ruled the students failed to demonstrate that their access to the school was being blocked or that they would be unable to write their final exams. She also took into account statements from the protesters who argued that such an order would have a “chilling effect” on their right to free speech.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 2, 2024.

Fakiha Baig, The Canadian Press