Press release Sussex Student’s Union passes motion to Boycott Carmel

Today 18th of February 2008, in the third Student Union council meeting, Sussex University Student’s Union officers have voted numerously in favour of a motion that resolves to boycott Carmel Agrexco agricultural products in union outlets and its sponsored market. The motion was proposed by the Friends of Palestine society, which has been campaigning tirelessly for years to demonstrate moral and practical solidarity with the Palestinian people and Palestinian students in particular.

Last year, after the cross campus referendum saw a majority of votes in favour, the union endorsed a twinning initiative between University of Sussex Student Union (USSU) and Al-Quds Open University Student Union in Tubas, Palestine. The motion noted that Agrexco is responsible for 60-70% of all settlement produce sold abroad, primarily selling produce from illegal settlements in the Jordan Valley, and is 50% owned by the Israeli state; and that the Palestinian villages of Al-Hadidiya and Humza in the Jordan Valley were bulldozed in August 2007 leaving families homeless, to expand settlement agricultural activities for Carmel Agrexco.

Sussex University has recently been granted fair trade status and today’s resolution will enhance the ethical practices which Sussex student demand. The passing of the motion also represents integrity as up until yesterday the union shops which sold goods exported by Carmel Agrexco made the students complicit in the dispossession of the very students they had twinned with.

Many of the students in Tubas work on land from which their parents were expulsed and under conditions that violate European Human Rights Legislation, a clause integral to the EU-Israel Trade agreement that Carmel Agrexco violates by labelling produce from the illegally occupied West Bank as “Israel”.

A Sussex humanities student member of the Jewish Society commented:“It has been argued that this motion might put Jewish students on campus in an awkward position. I personally don’t understand why I would feel awkward being a Jewish student after such a decision that clearly states this university is progressive and stays attentive to what is happening in the world.”

In today’s meeting 14 member of USSU council voted in favour of the motion, whilst three other members choose to abstain, no against votes have been registered, making it an overwhelming consensus among the highest decision making body within the Student Union.

LSE Union Demands Divestment from Israel

The London School of Economics Students’ Union (LSESU) yesterdayvoted overwhelmingly to call on its university and the National Unionof Students (NUS) to divest from companies that provide military and commercial support for the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, condemning the decades of human rights abuses and systematic oppression that has occurred as a result.

A motion, brought to the weekly Union General Meeting of more than 400 LSE students by the LSESU Palestine Society, resolved to lobby the LSE and NUS to divest from companies that provide military support for the Israeli occupation, facilitate the maintenance of the illegal “annexation” wall or operate on illegally occupied land or within Jewish only settlements. With a six to one margin, the Union voted to support the aim of targeted divestment until companies cease such practices or until Israel ends its discriminatory oppression and colonisation of Palestinian communities.

The Union also resolved to affiliate to the international campaign to end the siege on Gaza and engage in education campaigns to publicise more widely the injustices of Israel’s discriminatory polices. This includes working with Palestine solidarity organisations such as Jews for Justice for Palestinians, the British Committee for Universities in Palestine (BRICUP), the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Zochrot and the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), in a bid to end the legalised racial and religious discrimination in Israel.

This has been the result of much debate on LSE’s campus over recent weeks, following an earlier motion which acknowledged growing public comparisons made between Apartheid South Africa and the legalised ethnic segregation that has been imposed for decades by theIsraeli state. As such, the original proposed motion was amended to provide consensus across the Union in unequivocally condemning Israel’s policy of ethnic segregation, with 339 students voting in favour of divestment compared to just 46 against.

Irene Calis of the LSESU Palestine Society stated: “This is an historic moment in the struggle for justice and peace for all citizens of the Middle-East. It is time for us to demand our universities divest and stop funding Palestinian oppression. By putting political and economic pressure on the Israeli state, the student movement can not only show continued solidarity with the Palestinian people, but also expedite the end of the Israeli occupation”

Emilano Huet-Vaughn, who spoke in favour of the motion added, “The resounding support for divestment after lengthy debate shows growing awareness of Israel’s systematic discrimination against the Palestinian people and a disgust with the colonial settler regime in the West Bank, and the brutal siege of the Gaza Strip. As a result many LSE students of all backgrounds have voted to take a stand for justice, equality and human rights for all.”

Human Rights Watch. Pakistan

Human Rights Watch has published the following

'Elections' are scheduled for 18th February

To the Government of Pakistan

Repeal all arbitrary laws and constitutional amendments in effect since November 3, 2007, and restore the Constitution in its entirety as it stood on November 3, 2007.

Release and reinstate Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and all other judges who have refused to take oath under the November 3 Provisional Constitution Order. Release all arbitrarily detained lawyers, political activists and opponents of the government. Provide prompt and appropriate redress to those arbitrarily detained. Withdraw all cases filed under the Anti-Terrorism Act, the sedition law or other sundry provisions of the law for acts protected under international human rights law or are otherwise not cognizable criminal offenses. Immediately lift all restrictions in violation of international law on the rights to freedom of expression, association and, assembly. End efforts to coerce or intimidate judges and lawyers from exercising their legal functions and the rights to freedom of expression and assembly.

To the international community

Human Rights Watch urges the international community, particularly the United States and United Kingdom, as President Musharraf’s principal supporters, to press Musharraf to take the above actions. The US and UK should make clear that parliamentary elections Musharraf has announced cannot be free or fair unless he does so.

Human Rights Watch also calls on the United States to suspend all non-humanitarian assistance to the government of Pakistan and impose a travel ban on senior military and government officials until Pakistan returns to the constitution as it stood on November 3 2007, releases from house arrest and reinstates all dismissed judges including Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, and restores full media freedoms.

Court of Appeal overturns 'terror' convictions

Dozens of anti-terrorist investigations and prosecutions are in jeopardy after senior judges yesterday quashed the convictions of five young Muslims fordownloading extremist propaganda. Three Court of Appeal judges, led by the Lord Chief Justice, questioned whether they should ever have been prosecuted for merely possessing the material. The ruling means that in future the prosecution will have to prove that defendants intended to commit terrorist attacks.

The men, four university students and a schoolboy, who ran away from home saying that he wanted to die fighting jihad, are the first people to have convictions for Islamist terrorism overturned since the War on Terror began in 2001. The judges ordered that Irfan Raja, 20, Awaab Iqbal, 20, Aitzaz Zafar, 21, Usman Malik, 22, and Akbar Butt, 21 – who were in the dock to hear the judgment – be freed immediately. Three hours after the judgment was handed down, the five men walked out the front door of the court.

Mr Butt said: “Whatever happened has happened and I’m just happy to be out now. I won my freedom back.”The judges’ ruling dealt a severe blow to the body of anti-terrorism legislation in Britain by rewriting two key sections of the Terrorism Act 2000. Sections 57 and 58 – which outlawed the possession of items likely to be of use or connected to terrorism – have been used by police and prosecutors to spearhead the fight against the radicalisation and recruitment of young Muslims.

Related Links

‘Lyrical Terrorist’ among those who may benefit.
How a son’s note led to a rethink of terror law.

The police regard the sections as a means of intervening early to prevent potential recruits going over seas to wage jihad or to receive terror training. Continuing investigations will be urgently reviewed, cases awaiting trial under the legislation may have to be abandoned and a number of people convicted of terror offences, including Samina Malik, the so-called Lyrical Terrorist, are expected to lodge appeals.

Detectives said that the five men freed had large collections of extremist material and were planning to travel to Afghanistan to wage jihad. Mr Raja left a farewell note for his parents and said that he would see them in Paradise. The trial judge said that the men had become “intoxicated” by extremism. But human rights lawyers and Muslim community leaders claimed that no evidence of a terrorist plot had been uncovered. They argued that the Terrorism Act 2000 had been used to criminalise young people simply for harbouring radical thoughts.

The appeal court described the terror legislation as imprecise and uncertain and said that it allowed police to define terrorist offences far too widely.The judges ordered that, in future cases, the Crown would have to prove that defendants clearly intended to engage in terrorism or that the items they possessed were of practical use to a terrorist. They said the intention of the legislation had been to criminalise possession of items that might be used in making a bomb. The appellants, however, had only possessed literature. The judgment said: “Literature may be stored in a book or on a bookshelf, or on a computer drive, without any intention on the part of the possessor to make any future use of it at all.” The Crown Prosecution Service said that it was studying the judgment and considering an appeal to the House of Lords.