Pro-Palestinian encampment at UQAM officially taken down

The pro-Palestinian encampment at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) was officially taken down – and a cleanup is underway.

Demonstrators had been camping there for nearly a month and had said they would be leaving by Thursday night, but insisted that their fight for liberation of the Palestinian people is not over.

The camp had been set up in the courtyard of the Complexe des sciences Pierre-Dansereau since May 12.

On Friday morning, workers were seen trying to remove the graffiti on the walls of a building there that seems to have been added amid the encampment.

Campers had said that they were satisfied with a resolution adopted by the university’s board of directors Wednesday night about the Israel-Hamas war.

In this resolution, UQAM pledged to “ensure that none of its current and future academic agreements, including those with Israeli universities, come into conflict” with certain principles.

The school also made a commitment to peace and respect for international humanitarian law.

The resolution calls on the Fondation de l’UQAM to have no direct investment that profit from armaments.

In a press release published Thursday morning, the activist group L’Université populaire Al-Aqsa de l’UQAM (UPA-UQAM) said the resolution was “far from satisfactory” because it does not call for a complete boycott of Israeli universities.

They maintain, however, that the encampment “made it possible to hold UQAM responsible for its actions by placing it in the spotlight of public opinion.”

“Despite the end of the encampment, we will continue the fight, since we cannot be satisfied with performative declarations giving a misleading image of a so-called commitment of the university,” said Sara Hamadi, a student and camper at UPA-UQAM.

Activist are still demanding that the CAQ government abolish it’s Quebec office in Tel Aviv.