Joint Statement from the Socialist Party and Queen’s University Belfast Palestine Assembly (QUBPA)
A student activist and member of the QUB Palestine Assembly and the Socialist Party, is being targeted by Queen’s University Belfast for peaceful protest. Specifically for protesting the University’s continued complicity in Israeli apartheid through it’s ties to companies linked with the Zionist genocide and occupation of Palestine.
She has been threatened with expulsion following flimsy allegations of “threatening and intimidating behaviour” and “bringing the University into disrepute”.
These allegations are directed at her participation in a protest at a career’s fair held by QUB in February 2025. It was attended by companies deeply complicit in the genocide of tens of thousands of Palestinians in just the last two years. The protest highlighted the role of companies like Collins Aerospace, Martin Baker, Seagate, and Coca-cola in Israeli apartheid and genocide, as well as the University’s own complicity through it’s investments managed by BlackRock.
Collins Aerospace, a subsidiary of RTX (formerly Raytheon), and Martin Baker are key suppliers of arms and aircraft parts to so-called Israel. Coca-cola operates bottling plants in occupied West Bank settlements, brutally stolen from Palestinians by Zionist settlers.
Queen’s students, and indeed everyone, have a right and a duty to protest the presence of genocide-complicit companies on campus, and in wider society. We maintain that QUB is complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and that this, in reality, is what brings the University into disrepute. The University administration has chosen to host companies directly involved in settler-colonialism and is targeting its own students for peaceful political expression. It has chosen to favour its own profits, and the profits of arms firms, over the basic democratic rights of its students. These threats from QUB are a blatant attempt to get rid of a prominent voice for Palestinian liberation on campus, and to create a chilling effect, discouraging staff and students from questioning their institution’s blatant and unrepentant support for apartheid and genocide.
We reject in the strongest terms the University’s allegations. During February’s protest there was no harassment, no threats, and no intimidation. Queen’s have tried to claim that the actions of this student and other protesters cut across other students’ right to freedom of expression. We refute this entirely. It is actually Queen’s who are suppressing that right. Queen’s must drop all disciplinary actions against student activists. We call on trade unions, student unions, and the wider movement for Palestinian liberation to stand in solidarity with our member and the right to protest. We will fight this witch hunt Queen’s is waging.
Over the past few months the government's work experience scheme has come under increasing scrutiny. The scheme is nothing more than one attempting to introduce slave-labour for the young unemployed, with young people working 30 hours a week, for eight weeks, and receiving no additional pay on top of their Job Seekers Allowance (JSA), which they are threatened with losing if they do not participate.