According to a letter from students of the university, participants of the protest blocked the activities of the fair “preventing and harassing several people not to participate” and “assaulting employees of the event’s security service”.
Anti-Zionist protesters prevented the holding of the Israeli Universities Fair at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) this past Monday (03). Over 200 university students registered to participate in the event could not even enter the place where the fair was to be held, as protesters gathered with flags and banners and blocked the entrances. The facade of the building was graffitied with the words “Free Palestine”.
A video recorded by a student from PUC Campinas, who went to Unicamp to visit the fair of Israeli universities, shows the mobilization in front of an entrance of the event, and demonstrators try to prevent him from continuing the recording. When the student says that he would just like to access the event and asks what the protesters’ objective was, one of them answers that they wanted to make the fair not happen because it was “genocidal”. When the student tries to argue that it was a democratic space, one of the protesters retorts that “this fair is not democratic because it endorses genocide,” and he is forced to walk away.
Despite claims that the demonstration was peaceful, members of the StandWithUs Brazil team were present and witnessed assaults against security guards and employees linked to participating universities. The organization also said, in a statement published on Monday, that “with their faces covered by the Palestinian headscarf, the vandals incited a crowd of dozens of people, tried to forcibly invade the event hall, and cornered the team for several hours.
One of the StandWithUs Brasil professors, Igor Sabino, was contacted by the Unicamp students who were prevented from participating in the program, asking them to use the organization’s networks to publish a letter written by them about what happened. In the letter, the students report that protesters blocked the activities of the fair “preventing and harassing several people not to participate in this event and assaulting employees of the event’s security service. Moreover, they emphasize that many students, in the face of this event, feel aggrieved for not being able to have the experience of cultural exchange” and ask for a position by the University, especially by the DeDH (Executive Directorate of Human Rights). “The boycott of this event is a symptom of the successive attacks by academic circles against the Israeli community and any possibility of contact with its culture, demonstrating an anti-Semitism rooted in the same community that values diversity, tolerance, inclusion and plurality. It is worth mentioning that there were speeches comparing the State of Israel to the Nazi regime and to Apartheid in South Africa. We, students at Unicamp, repudiate the attitudes that occurred and reinforce that Article 5, item XV of the Federal Constitution was brutally wounded, as well as Article 20 of Law 7.716/89 and the regulations of Unicamp itself,” the document states.
According to Cléo Assunção, Institutional Relations Coordinator of StandWithUs Brazil, who was present at the event, “violent mobilizations like the one that took place yesterday should be a warning to society about endemic anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, which have been growing rapidly on university campuses. The Brazilian academic environment should be an example of democratic dialogue, tolerance, freedom of expression and respect for others. However, yesterday’s episode portrays that we are moving in the opposite direction. We hope that the higher education institutions of the country pay attention to what happened, since episodes like this are not only a boycott to the State of Israel, but a boycott to Brazilian education.
The Israeli Universities Fair is an annual event promoted in partnership with large Brazilian universities, aiming at the cooperation and academic exchange with Brazilian students, through opportunities such as internships, undergraduate and graduate courses. Days before the scheduled date, the Palestinian Arab Federation of Brazil (Fepal) asked for the cancellation of the fair, alleging that Israeli universities would be linked to the construction of an “apartheid regime” of Israel. However, the rector of Unicamp, Tom Zé, in a session of the University Council, opted to maintain the event, which had already been authorized by the university.
After the demonstrations and the prevention of access to the event, in a statement, the Unicamp Rectory informed that the fair could not be held due to “demonstrations against its occurrence” and that “the departure, safely, of the team promoting the event occurred after negotiations with representatives of the demonstration”. In addition, the institution reinforced that “the right to free demonstration will be guaranteed as long as they are held peacefully and as long as there is no impediment to academic activities duly authorized by the decision-making bodies of the University.