Statement from Students for Palestine Finland 29.11.

 

STATEMENT FROM STUDENTS FOR PALESTINE FINLAND
2.12.2023

The University of Helsinki’s callous response to our walkout and demonstration on 29.11, the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people, shows a lack of respect towards its students, a disregard of our right to demonstrate and complicity with genocide.

We are no longer shocked or surprised at the callousness with which the university treats its own students. The university's glaring double standards, its silence on an ongoing genocide, and its shameful treatment of its own students make it abundantly clear to us that we are not respected or appreciated within the institution. We saw that the University of Helsinki would rather call the police on its own students and threaten them with police brutality, than condemn an ongoing genocide in Palestine. We have been treated in a suffocating and humiliating fashion just for standing against genocide and colonialism. This is unacceptable.

We were live on Instagram, showing how the police disregarded our safety. Thirteen of our committed students were harassed and detained. Police used excessive force, for example a wristlock. At the same time, many of us were threatened with pepper spray and heavy police presence, including a police dog.

Not surprisingly, then, the university board has failed to answer our demands, not even answering the letters and emails we sent them. When Ukraine was invaded, they had no problem issuing statements, cutting connections to Russian institutions, and supporting Ukrainian students and scholars. Now during an ongoing genocide in Palestine, this seems to be an impossibility.

Recently, scholarly work and discussions around decolonization have increased significantly within universities—including at the University of Helsinki. However, it's clear that the University of Helsinki has failed to grasp an essential lesson of decolonization: it is not a metaphor. Decolonizing the university requires dismantling its racial-colonial constitution. We, Students for Palestine Finland, demand decolonial politics that go beyond performative solidarity and theorisation. For us, decolonization entails a struggle against the colonial order of things in its entirety. bell hooks taught us that "solidarity is a verb". Honouring this approach to decolonial politics, we continue to call for the university to act and to answer our demands.

The University of Helsinki claims to represent us, yet it has violently repressed, silenced, and smeared our peaceful demonstration on Wednesday 29.11. This was despite informing the university that we were going to stay for 24 hours to wait for the Rector or any member of the university board to show up and address our demands. We would have considered leaving had the university showed any kind of radical empathy with our demands or shown a willingness to condemn the textbook case of Genocide taking place in Gaza as we speak. We have experienced subtle colonial mechanisms which are meant to intimidate us. But we refuse to be intimidated or silenced. This position should not be considered radical. It is the bare minimum of what we can do in the face of such repression and calamity.

The University of Helsinki, Aalto University and other universities in Finland have become increasingly hostile toward students resisting and protesting displays of institutional complicity with racism, colonialism, and apartheid. We experienced this ourselves with the aggressiveness of our university, university security, and the calling of the police on us during our peaceful demonstration, exposing the ongoing hostility toward students standing against apartheid and colonial domination.

On the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, the university chose to remain complicit in the ongoing genocide, chose to ignore its students and chose to suppress pro-Palestinian speech on campus. We feel unsafe. A university that claims to hold space for discussion, democracy, right to assembly, and freedom of expression repressed our peaceful demonstration on its premises with the use of intimidation tactics and violence performed by 18 police patrols and over 50 police officers.

Our demonstration honoured Palestinian lives and the Palestinian struggle for liberation. We heard inspiring speeches and performances from Palestinian activists, Jewish activists, and allies. We sang, chanted, and danced. We stood in solidarity. 

The University of Helsinki to uphold the values of truth, bildung, freedom, and inclusivity. This moment, sadly, has made it clear for us that the university has no interest in living up to the values it to maintain. However, through its recent actions the university has shown that it chooses to stand on the side of a racist, colonialist, apartheid-regime, while trying to hide behind a veil of “neutrality” and being “apolitical”. While speaking of, the university refuses to condemn a colonial power destroying a many millennia old civilisation, one of the oldest cities in the planet, Gaza, and bombing one of the oldest churches in the old city of Gaza.

Israel has breached numerous articles of Geneva Convention, including but not limited to:

Article 33: No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and all measures of intimidation or terrorism are prohibited.

Article 24, 51, 77 & 79: Protection of the civilian population, including children, journalists, and medical personnel.

Article 54 & 55: Protection of objects critical to survival of the civilian’s population, including food, water, medical supplies, and civilian property.

Those are the least severe of these violations of basic human rights in the ongoing genocide in Gaza now.

While talking about freedom, the university refuses to cut ties with institutions that deny its realisation for the Palestinian people. Finland chose to stand against Apartheid in South Africa. Why can't we do the same now and stand on the right side of history against Israeli Apartheid?

While speaking of inclusivity, the University of Helsinki disregards many members of its community who are Palestinian and/or have family ties or close relations to Palestine. Some of their loved ones are currently unaccounted for, injured, or sadly, no longer with us. Other communities in the university are disregarded as well, such as the wider Arab community, others from the global south and majority, Finns and internationals who are strongly behind the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and justice. Those community members seek—and rightfully deserve —acknowledgement, support, and understanding, in alignment with the university's Equality and Diversity policies.  We urge the university to value Palestinian lives and acknowledge their trauma on par with other oppressed peoples. Undervaluing these fundamental human rights exacerbates anti-Palestinian sentiments, and leads to heightened levels of discrimination, hostility, and suppression of Palestinian students, stuff, and faculty. This is not acceptable. 

We stand behind bell hooks who said: "what we do is more important than what we say or what we say we believe."

The university owes us more than an explanation and the least we could accept is same treatment the Ukrainian community received during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We refuse selective solidarity, and we choose the road of collective liberation instead. Universities across the world remain centers for political thought and action. Just a while ago, students occupied the university for three weeks with permission to protest budget cuts, but suddenly staying overnight at the university is strictly prohibited? How do you justify the violent removal of your students from a space that you claim is ours? You claim that the previous occupation was allowed because it directly concerned students. Are you denying the existence of Palestinian students? Are you denying that the liberation of the Palestinian people directly concerns us? How dare you claim to represent us.

In the face of overwhelming injustices, neutrality or silence is not an option.

The university has chosen to disregard its academic and intellectual duty to uphold truth and has instead turned its back on their Palestinian colleagues' call, students' calls, researchers' calls, and international calls to hold the perpetrators of genocide accountable. We will never leave the Palestinian people behind. We will continue to center Palestine and Palestinian voices across Finnish educational institutions and unite in a shared struggle to decolonize and reclaim educational spaces. We will continue to center anti-racist, anti-apartheid and anti-colonial struggles in our vision for a better world. No one is free until Palestine is free. We will continue to support the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, liberation and justice and urge all students to act, and not be passive about the situation. We all have moral duty to hold our universities, staff, departments, and others to account now and forever. What we truly want is a decolonized university that is free of apartheid and other forms of oppression and exploitation.

Long live Palestine, long live Gaza. 

تحيا فِلسطين، تَحيا غزّة.