Political activists arrested on QUT Campus

(Proper post tomorrow - promise!)

Quoted from a message posted on the NUSQueer Yahoo! Group

Here is a leaflet the social justice collective are handing out at QUT today. Yesterday four students were arrested by the cops after security was called on the social justice collective by the student guild during market week. This is the culmination of sytematic harassment, intimidation and censorship by the university against activists in the collective in which the student guild has been complicit.

We think the fact that the guild called security who subsequently called the pigs on students who were mainly building a forum about black deaths in custody should also portray the seriousness of what occurred.

Free Speech on campus
No to QUT's Political Censorship

At QUT Kelvin Grove Market Day 2007, a group of QUT students held a Students for Social Justice stall on campus. The students were handing out pamphlets about an anti-war film screening and and a black deaths in custody forum - not an unusual occurrence on a university campus that's supposed to be a place of learning, enlightenment, and free thinking. On this day, though, the students had campus Security, and then the police, called on them. Four students were arrested from
behind the stall, forced into police wagons, and charged with contravening a police order directing them to leave their own campus for eight hours - an occurrence unheard of at any other university campus in Australia.

The students received no support from their own Student Guild, who, in the era of VSU, have decided to side with Security and ask students to have their political activity 'authorised' by the Guild President - a process which, in the past, has seen students asked to censor their material, for example, alter text on leaflets (e.g., 'Free Palestine' was banned in 2006), provide lists of speakers for political forums -
or face intimidation and threats.

This harassment of students holding political activities on campus is not new. In second semester 2006, at a Mamdouh Habib forum on campus organised by the QUT Social Justice collective, students were harassed and prevented from handing out leaflets and building the forum on campus, QUT staff were harassed for letting students talk about the forum in their lectures, and students were repeatedly told their was a 'blanket ban' on political activity on campus. QUT Security deemed
Mamdouh Habib, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, a 'controversial figure', and the administration didn't want to see the forum go ahead. When it did, with attendance by 150 students, the issue of this harassment of students and staff, and the attempted censorship, was raised, and Security claimed they'd made no attempt to shut down the activity.

We think that students have a right to hold political stalls and activities on their campus without the university administration's permission, or have to submit to any order to censor or conservatise their material. The campaigns to end the war in Iraq, Free DavidHicks, and stop black deaths in custody, need your support on campus.

Join us in standing up to this blatant intimidation and harassment.

WE DEMAND:
The right to campaign for Social Justice without censorship!
No QUT disciplinary action for arrested students!
No cops on campus!

From members of the QUT Social Justice Collective.
(Amy Thomas, Ellen Nicholas, Rob Nicholas, Lauren Mellor).


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