UPDATE: The hunger strike has concluded. We are continuing to collect signatures until the University drops disciplinary measures against student protestors.
We are collecting signatories for an open letter, denouncing the University of Leicester's arrests and disciplinary measures against its own students for protesting, and in support of students who are hunger striking with the aim of divestment. Signing will help us pressure the University to drop said disciplinary measures and listen to our demands.
The letter reads as follows:
"Since the 15th of January, five students have been on hunger strike. The purpose is to show solidarity with the Leicester 11; protesters who were arrested on order of the University and to demand that the university cut ties with Barclays, arms companies and other companies targeted by BDS.
Despite the much welcome recent news of a ceasefire, charges and disciplinary measures against student activists have not yet been dropped. The University has issued TEOs (Temporary Exclusion Orders) which ban student activists from campus and their lectures due to being a supposed threat, robbing them of the education that they have paid for. These so called 'Temporary' Exclusion Orders have also been extended twice.
To assert that TEOs are merely a “precautionary measure” is both disingenuous and insulting. Temporary Exclusion Orders disrupt the lives of students, instilling fear, isolation, and uncertainty. Such sanctions, inflicted upon those who have taken a principled stand against links to companies involved in the supply of weapons used in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, are unconscionable. We urge you to immediately revoke these orders and cease all disciplinary proceedings against the students impacted.
The sanctioning of state violence against your own students — who are advocating against ties to a genocidal entity, is deplorable. Hundreds of thousands have been martyred, displaced, and traumatised by the machinery of Zionism and its enablers. The companies profiting from these weapons manufacture tools of oppression, ensuring that ethnic cleansing persists. The University of Leicester’s complicity in these atrocities, through associations or investments with such entities, cannot go unchallenged.
In addition, regardless of is there is ceasefire or not, the Palestinian cause will continue until Palestine is free. Israel will continue to indiscriminately kill Palestinian children, just as it has done for every year of the century. Ties with arms companies will undoubtedly remain unethical even beyond Palestinian liberation.
The University of Leicester has taken a repressive and abusive response to student protestors, likely in the belief that the demands of protestors can be held off and discarded once a ceasefire has been reached. However, support for the student activists have only ballooned in the light of the University's brutality towards them.
We, the undersigned, support the student protesters and call on the university to listen to their demands. We find it abhorrent the university has decided to have students arrested, and call for all disciplinary measures and TEO's to be dropped immediately."
