Sheffield Palestine protest encampment relaunches in Weston Park during Freshers’ Week

Sheffield’s long-running pro-Palestine protest encampment has returned for the duration of Freshers’ Week, this time in Weston Park.

The Sheffield Campus Coalition for Palestine, which ran the encampment outside the Students’ Union that ended in the summer, re-launched the encampment yesterday morning in the south-eastern corner of Weston Park. Located within view of Firth Court, the site holds university vice-chancellor Koen Lambert’s office.

The encampment consists of a handful of tents, as well as hand-made banners and Palestine flags. When The Sheffield Tab visited the encampment yesterday afternoon, the camp was manned by less than half a dozen people, not all of whom appeared to be students.

The protestors have said they will be remaining in place all week, and will pack up the camp on Friday. They told The Sheffield Tab that they will be holding a number of events over this week, with the purpose of “reaching out to new students and interrupting the university’s business as usual”.

Examples of events they’ll be holding include letter writing to Palestinian prisoners and educational workshops on “gendered oppression and critical masculinity.”

As the encampment is not on university grounds, the group doesn’t expect the university will be able to take any action against them. They also say police told them yesterday that they would be permitted to hold the encampment in the park for this week.

The group has reiterated their long-expressed demands from the University of Sheffield: Divestment from the arms industry, boycott of Israeli universities and companies, and accountability.

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They have also added a new demand: Freedom. In their own words, this new demand calls for the University of Sheffield to “cease all tactics of repression against students and staff for speaking, writing and protesting in the name of justice and liberation.

The group continued, telling The Sheffield Tab: “We call on university management to act in accordance with their advertised commitment to protect free speech and academic freedom for students and staff to express their beliefs and dissent without fear of punitive measures.”

Ever since the group started their first encampment in May, many members of the group have covered their faces with masks, and have asked not be named when speaking to The Sheffield Tab and other media outlets. They have also blurred their faces in social media posts.

via @palestine.sccp on Instagram

One protestor, who did not wish to be named, told The Sheffield Tab that they’d been warned by lecturers not to write about Palestinian issues in their academic work. They said: “What I’ve experienced is that there is a general atmosphere of fear in many of the departments.”

And, it was fear of potential disciplinary action that was behind the group’s decision to decline to defend themselves in court by naming specific people as defendants, during the legal battle over their eviction earlier this summer.

Last year, a freedom of information request by The Tab uncovered invoices showing that the University of Sheffield spent just under £40,000 investigating students associated with protest occupations.

In the spring, the Sheffield Campus Coalition for Palestine published a “Genocide and Apartheid Complicity Report” detailing its claims about the university and outlining their grievances.

The protesters say that they have not received any substantive engagement from the University of Sheffield on their demands.

This is in contrast to other universities, a number of whom have engaged in discussions with student protest groups in recent months.

The encampment at the University of Cambridge was ended after after the university promised to engage with protestors’ demands and to explore their questions about university policy.

The University of York announced in April it would no longer hold investments in weapons and defence related companies.

The University of Sheffield has received more than £70 million from arms manufacturing companies since 2012.

As part of the university’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, it partners with a number of British arms manufacturing companies to conduct research and provide teaching to students.

The percentage of Israel’s military imports that come from UK companies is, however, small. According to the BBC, the value of British arms exports to Israel amounted to only £42 million in 2022, much less than the US, Germany and even Italy, which only accounts for 0.9 per cent of the weapons Israel buys from the international market.

The Sheffield Campus Coalition for Palestine’s original encampment began on 1st May, and was evicted in July.

The original encampment outside the Students’ Union on its first day in May

A member of the encampment said: “It’s evident that the University of Sheffield believes that their eviction of our 93 day encampment marked the end of our demands. SCCP’s steadfast statement is that we are just beginning and that we will not be silenced.

“We will continue to demand both UoS and Sheffield Hallam university divest from all arms trade deals, stop the manufacturing of murderous weapons systems and disassociate from all Israel-owned businesses. For the liberation of Palestine, and the liberation of all oppressed people.”

The restarting of the encampment comes weeks after foreign secretary David Lammy announced the suspension of 30 licences to export arms to Israel over concerns the weapons in question would be used for violations of international law.

The University of Sheffield declined to comment. 

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