The University and College Union (UCU) today [Tuesday] called on
the Home Secretary to stop obstructing Palestinian students in
Gaza taking up their places at British universities.
The union said it would otherwise be hard to avoid the conclusion
that government policy was driven by “an inherent racism” [1].
UCU's intervention follows reports at the weekend that the UK
government has so far refused to follow Italy and other European
countries in exempting the young Palestinians from requirements
to provide biometric data [2].
Writing to on behalf of 125,000
education workers, UCU General Secretary Jo Grady noted it was
“all the more shameful” that the government was not “going out of
its way to ensure these young Palestinians make it safely and
smoothly to our campuses in September... given its role in
perpetuating the genocidal conditions” they face.
UCU, the largest post-16 education trade union in the world, is
demanding the Home Secretary “expedite the process and ensure all
these young Palestinians make it to our seminar rooms and lecture
halls for the start of the academic year”.
More widely, the union is demanding the Labour government
introduce a non-restrictive family visa scheme for Palestinians
and finally end its complicity in Israel's genocide.
Ends
NOTES
[1] Full text of letter
Dear Home Secretary,
I am writing on behalf of 125,000 education workers, in light of
the Sunday Times report at the weekend, to urge you and
the government to stop effectively blocking young Palestinians in
Gaza from taking up their places at British universities this
coming academic year.
In the most horrendous and challenging circumstances imaginable,
80 students from Gaza remarkably managed to secure places to
study at our great universities. Despite being tormented,
starved, forced to enter shooting galleries to queue for food and
water, bombed, and watching their friends and relatives murdered,
with their homes and communities turned to dust, they
persevered.
That your government is not going out of its way to ensure these
young Palestinians make it safely and smoothly to our campuses in
September is all the more shameful given its role in perpetuating
the genocidal conditions imposed on them by Israel.
A 26-year old from Gaza who has won a place to study computer
science at the University of Manchester told the Sunday
Times he completed his interview with shrapnel in his leg
from an Israeli shell that hit his home while he was on the roof
trying desperately to get internet connection.
While he had been checking his email on a previous occasion, he
said, “a[n Israeli] helicopter gunship suddenly appeared and
fired directly at me. One shell nearly blew off my head. Another
missed my hand by inches”.
His demand of you is simple: exempt him and all other students in
Gaza waiting to take up their British university places from the
requirement to provide biometric data to the Home Office —
something that is impossible for them to do under current
conditions.
I urge you to expedite process and ensure all these young
Palestinians make it to our seminar rooms and lecture halls for
the start of the academic year, to introduce a non-restrictive
family visa scheme for Palestinians, and, above all, to end
British complicity in Israel's genocide.
Otherwise, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the
government's attitude towards migrants and refugees from Gaza —
like its support for Israel's genocide more generally — is the
product, as a Conservative MP put it in the House of Commons
earlier this year, of “an inherent racism”.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Jo Grady
UCU General Secretary
[2] Sunday Times report: https://www.thetimes.com/world/middle-east/israel-hamas-war/article/gaza-students-uk-universities-oxbridge-blocked-7j8hhqnhx
