Pro-Palestine camp set up at Cape Town campus
Cape Town, South Africa (PANA) – Staff and students at the University of Cape Town have erected a pro-Palestinian camp on the campus, following a trend at Johannesburg’s Wits University and others across the United States.
They have laid out a long white banner down the steps of one the buildings with the names of hundreds of victims of the Israel-Hamas war since October 2023.
The camp was organised by the student movement UCT4Palestine which has called on all institutions of higher learning “to live up to their stated values by supporting the Palestinian call for a total boycott of Israeli academic institutions and corporations complicit in human rights abuses and genocide”.
Meanwhile, South Africa on Thursday asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague to urgently order Israel to end Israel’s assault on Rafah, halt its military campaign across Gaza, and allow international investigators and journalists into the territory. Its lawyers expanded on a written request for judges to issue an emergency order to stop the offensive into Rafah.
Pretoria filed an urgent application to the ICJ last week after the latest offensive into Rafah. In his opening address, South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Vusimuzi Madonsela, told the court Israel is escalating its attacks and its alleged “genocide has continued apace and has just reached a new and horrific stage”.
Israel will present its arguments on Friday. The ICJ’s rulings and orders are binding and without appeal. While the court has no way to enforce them, an order against a country could hurt its international reputation and set a legal precedent.
-0- PANA CU/MA 17May2024
