Introduction
EDITOR’S NOTE: The encampment has now been cleaned up. However, Students Against the Occupation are still protesting. If you want to stay updated, please check their Instagram: @studerendemodbesaettelsen.
As nearly 8 months have passed since the beginning of the genocide, some of us Global Health students have felt increasingly disappointed by the lack of awareness and education within the University of Copenhagen’s classrooms- particularly when the foundations of Global Health lie in international collaborations that promote health and equity for all. As a student-led initiative, we at Eye on Global Health feel it is long overdue to speak up about our roles as students in a world where a genocide is currently taking place.
We invited Lucas Rigillo, one of the spokespeople of Students Against the Occupation, for an interview. Student Against the Occupation has set up an encampment on Copenhagen University grounds to protest against the university’s financial and academic affiliations with Israel. Students Against the Occupation (or SAO) wrote up 6 demands, and promised not to leave the encampment site before the university meets all of them. On the day of the interview, a first victory came in; A statement from Copenhagen University was released that shared the decision of the university’s divestment from three companies blacklisted by the UN due to their operation in illegal settlements in the West Bank.
The encampment
On Tuesday, 28th of May, Lucas and I met at the encampment, named Rafah garden. He showed me around the 120 tents that were standing pridefully around us. Some students were gathering around the dinner table, where a woman put down ten big tin foil trays with freshly cooked meals. “She’s been here since the beginning… And brings us food every day,” Lucas smiled.
The encampment exudes solidarity, community and passion. There are cardboard signs with political claims stuck to big cupboards that are overflowing with donated food products. In the middle, students and other supporters were gathering in camping chairs, some wearing Palestinian keffiyehs, discussing the recent developments. Astrid, one of the protesters, pointed up to the tree and mentioned she had been sleeping in a self-built treehouse since the beginning of the encampment.
Lucas and I find a seat at one of the picnic tables around the encampment and begin our conversation.
Maybe you want to start by introducing Students Against the Occupation* (DK: Studerende Mod Besættelsen) from your own perspective? What is the movement? When and where did it start? Why did you become part of the movement?
Students Against the Occupation (DK: Studerende Mod Besættelsen) started in 2021, when there was a group of students that started looking into KU investments. I am not really sure why they did that. Probably they were following the BDS1 movement, which calls for academic boycotting, divestment and sanctions. From there, they might have been curious about the university’s investments.They discovered back then that the university had investments in different companies [blacklisted by the UN]. In the beginning, the numbers were quite low, like 200,000, Danish kroner or something like that.
They decided to meet up with the rector, after they held a petition that got around 1200 signatures. And he was like, “Okay, we’ll look into that. That’s problematic.”
But there were no divestments at that point. After, I think it went a little bit into hibernation.
Until October 7th*, then they held a really big meeting for people interested in working with the movement. That was also when I joined.
I already followed the initial Instagram account. And at some point, I saw that there were calls for school strikes. I messaged them on Instagram: “Are you planning on calling for strikes?” They said yes. Then I also saw that they announced this big meeting.
From this big meeting, we started working with a new petition to collect more signatures. We went to different campuses every Friday to get signatures. That was in October to December. That petition got more than 2000* signatures.
We brought the petition to the administration. They said they would look into it. At that point, we actually got put on the agenda for the next board meeting, which was a new step. We had not been put officially on the agenda before. So then we went to that meeting. Two of my friends were present, and they said that they had spent 15 minutes looking at it, and after a brief discussion, they moved on. [From our side] we had also done a lot of work researching other universities’ investment policies and previous divestments. So with the agenda point, we proposed an actual, concrete clause to the existing Investment Policy [of Copenhagen University]. We wrote it out, talked to lawyers, all of that.
And they [the Study Board] barely looked at it. It was briefly mentioned by someone from the Student Representatives that there was a proposal from the students regarding KU investments. Then they basically verbally decided that they would take a more active look at their investments, but nothing concrete happened.
There were also no follow-up points for the meeting after?
No, so at that point, we could feel that this was not really going anywhere. There were a lot of promises, but nothing concrete happened.
But then we saw the encampments in the USA. We were like “wow, that’s really a much bigger, much more attention-grabbing thing to do.” However, at the beginning, I thought it wouldn’t really be possible here [in Denmark].
Why not?
I just didn’t see the numbers. We continued doing frequent group meetings every three weeks, and more frequent meetings with smaller groups, but I could tell it was hard to keep up the momentum. During some of the big meetings, there were only 15 people.
So I felt like okay, if this is the core group [for the encampment], it’s not really going to be that big, right? However, we were thinking about it. And we also got a lot of messages at that point, like, “are you going to do the same?” I said, “We’re looking into it.”
Then I think at the end of April, or the start of May, we were like: “Okay, we’ll do it.” Some people proposed starting on the 12th of May. But that was three weeks ahead at that point. We decided to start earlier, to keep up the momentum. So, we started on the 6th of May.
Do you know how many students were there for the very first night?
I remember, it was 40-50 tents.
How did the word spread? Because it was pretty secret right?
We communicated through Signal. We created a big group chat, where we added people we knew who would be open to become involved. We texted them “We are doing this encampment. You know, for now, keep it quiet. But as soon as we begin, you can tell anyone, and everyone is invited.”
We just had to make the guidelines [for the campsite], and think about our demands.
Then we started, and there were a lot of people there. I remember there were like, 300 people in the Signal group.
How did that make you feel?
It was nice to see everyone.. I feel like there were a lot of people that had been waiting. I thought to myself: “Wow, okay, I want to do this. I’m ready.”
It was just so different to see that grand mobilisation of people compared to all of the behind the scenes work we’ve been doing. It was good to see a group of people take over this area.)
When we read out the guidelines and said: “This is a liberated area,” everyone started cheering. It was very emotional.
And what was your personal motivation to get so involved?
I’ve been following Palestine for many years, and I have been going to protests sporadically. Once every year, I feel like there would be some sort of tragedy. I remember when the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in 2022, there was a big protest at the embassy.
And before that, there were the assaults on Gaza in 2021. Out of personal interest, I had continued reading about the conflict, and I became involved in some of the protest groups. Now, I felt like it was a really natural process to become more actively involved.
You are a student, part of a student-led movement. What do you think is the role of a student’s voice? In general, but also as a student in Denmark?
I feel like we could tell from the beginning that our voices were very important to people.
You could also see that in the US… There was a real fear within the people who hold power.
When the students start organising and working together, the powerful people get scared.
Why do you think that is?
I think they can tell that the youth has so much energy. They’re the future of the country. Whenever they start really actively fighting the systems, I think the people in power get worried, because that’s where the end of their regime starts.
I also did a speech on other protests the week before we started the encampment, where I was focusing on student movements throughout history, and how they had been repressed really hard every time. I mentioned Kent State University, where protests against the Cambodian war ended up in four students being killed. Luckily, that hasn’t happened with this movement, not even in the US, where it was quite brutal.
It is just insane that the people in power and the police can see it as such a threat that they ended up killing four people.
Do you think that they’re afraid because we hold a certain position in society?
Yeah, you could tell that the way the media talked to us was really different from how they had been talking about the conflict/genocide before.
Do you want to expand on that?
We went on a lot of debate shows in the beginning. People were very surprised how argumentative we were, and how good we were at arguing for our case2, and arguing against these positions or views that were just sort of accepted as the status quo, but they don’t really have a good reason.
For example, people kept saying that the university is apolitical and shouldn’t take political decisions or whatever. They thought that if the university follows the government’s guidelines, then it’s not a political decision, or whatever. But the university can make their own political decisions, and I think we were just good at disarming that.
Most importantly, we have been emphasising that it’s all just really about the most basic foundations of our society…which are human rights. When we’re like “That’s just really what our countries claimed to be built on, and we’re not following that right now.” I think it sort of exposes their hypocrisy.
Why do you think that other anti-genocide demonstration groups have received such different media attention?
Honestly, there’s been a lot of Islamophobia and anti-brown racism.
With the people who have been leading those movements?
Yeah. They just haven’t had a voice and they’ve been misrepresented. The images in the media have been really focused on people in a hijab or ‘angry brown men’.
The protesters are really just being seen as part of Danish minorities, who are, as always, ‘mad at Denmark’ and like, ‘against Denmark’ or whatever.
Do you think that now that it is a group of students the whole narrative has changed?
Yeah. It’s horrible that it is true. We’ve been very mindful to not only have white students as PR spokespeople. We did not want it to be like that [that Student Against the Occupation received more active media attention]. We wanted the main protest movement to have the attention that we have, but it only came when it was us.
In the process of writing up your demands, how did that process go?
The demands of the encampment were based on the demands we wrote up for the second petition. Most demands were about the investments, but there was also a demand about recognizing the genocide, and one about helping the Palestinian students.
We also sent out an open letter in a newspaper, where we had the basic demands listed out: recognize the genocide, call for a ceasefire, divest, do an academic boycott, end purchase agreements, and help out the Palestinian students. Initially, these were set up as three demands, but for the encampment we spaced them out into six demands.
Today, May 28th, one of the demands was met (a stop on the investments). How do you feel? And what about the other ones?
It’s pretty incredible. It’s been three years, and finally something happened. When I joined, I don’t know if I ever really felt like it was going to happen.
At some point, I felt like it had to happen, but it’s really crazy to see that from tomorrow, there will not be any investments in these [UN-blacklisted] companies.
However, the issue is that earlier there were completely different companies that we were looking into that fell out of their portfolio.
So you’re a bit scared that maybe they can sell these now.. But this does not promise anything for future investments?
We have no idea if they have set up some sort of mechanism to avoid investing [into Israeli and UN-blacklisted companies] again. Today’s statement says that they’ve stopped using portfolios that include three companies [that were on the UN blacklist].
So we have no idea what else will happen. The amount changed so much. When we looked at it in December, it was 10 million dkk, now it’s 1 million. We have no idea how it fluctuates, and what determines the fluctuation. So… we’re worried [about how the divestment will progress long term].
Now we’re also really pushing for the academic boycott, even though they’ve expressed that they’re really not interested in that.
Why do you think they are not interested in an academic boycott?
I think an academic boycott is considered very extreme. People have this idea that you should always cooperate with the universities. I also remember when the academic boycott was imposed on Russia and you saw a lot of Russian artists having their concerts and exhibitions cancelled here in Denmark. At that time, I also felt like I wasn’t sure if it was the right strategy.
It also maybe raises the question a little bit of academic separation from governmental action?
Yeah. We’ve looked into it a lot, and BDS also calls for an academic boycott. There are a lot of universities, basically all the universities in Israel, that cooperate really closely with the Israeli Defence Forces. Copenhagen University has agreements with, for example, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which has a campus in the West Bank, which they claim to be Israeli territory. Tel Aviv University is also really, really closely tied to the military.
So I think it’s very important. We were also told by many that it’s more important to do these symbolic boycotts, because they just show that Israeli society is really tied up in occupation and military power, and you can’t really separate it.
How about the last demand? Why is it so important for you as the movement to have the university recognize that a genocide is going on?
I think it just has to be normalised on an institutional level.
We’ve been saying it for seven months. Even the International Court of Justice is saying it’s plausible [to call it a genocide]. They ordered Israel to stop its attacks, and ordered Israel to do everything they can to prevent the crime of genocide. And now, clearly, they’ve ignored both of those orders. It’s not legally declared yet, but it sort of implies that if they are not following those orders they will not be preventing genocide.
This means we’re closing in on the legal expression of genocide. However, there are still no governments, no institutions who are willing to say [that it is a genocide]. It’s just strange that it has to be so difficult. People are really walking around the word using every other word to describe what’s happening.
It says a lot about the language of war, the vocabulary you choose. What are your views on that? What is the power of saying genocide over war or conflict?
I think there’s a lot of implicit violence in the language we use. Or rather, it’s the way we portray violence that is really skewed. People continue to say it’s a war between Israel and Hamas. It is phrased like: “We see a legitimate state against a terror organisation”. They say it’s a conflict. They say it’s a war between two parties.
It does not explain or entail that one party is occupied and has no recognition internationally. They have no weapons. They do not have a military, it is just a few people who own weapons.
You could also just really clearly see it with Russia, when Putin invaded Ukraine and said it was like a ‘special operation’, a denazifying mission. He was really interested in not calling it a war. And now people are really interested in calling this a war and not a genocide. People are really trying to hold on to the idea that it’s a war between two sides.
And through those words putting blame on both sides?
Yeah, and really emphasising that it was a war started on October 7th.
Lucas, you seem to know a lot. How do you stay educated yourself? And how do you educate the people around you, especially when institutions have tried to remain silent and universities resist to even mention it in the classrooms?
We’ve done a lot of teach-ins and lectures. Everyday we are reading the news out loud for each other, trying to stay updated. We have a little library with books about Palestine.
Obviously, extending the word outside of the encampment is a bit more difficult. I think there’s some people that are not very willing to hear about it or look into it.
I’ve used my social media. I’ve tried to talk to friends, but there’s probably more I could do…
With my parents, I think they’ve moved their position a bit since the beginning, which is nice to see.
It is quite difficult, especially being here in Denmark, as it is all happening so far away. What do you think is the power of showing support from here? Maybe I struggled a little bit with that: ‘What is my position? Like, being so far away, in this country? Like, what can I do?’ What would your message be or what is your perspective on that?
It is important to recognize that we are a very small part, but we’re a part of something much bigger. Especially as Europeans, and as people from countries that have been colonisers and who are still at the heart of the global empire, moving our governments and our positions is really, really important.
And unfortunately, our voices are just heard and listened to more than protesters in Jordan, or Iraq, or South Africa. Because people still think of Europe and the US as the leaders of the world. I think it is important that people here are part of changing what our countries have done in the past, and are part of creating a new world.
If a reader of this article feels inspired to help, what are some ways that they could do that?
Organise. I feel like being part of this movement, and especially the encampment has changed everything about how I engage with this issue. I think for a lot of people, also for me before, it was more of an individual thing [the way we would be involved with the conflict] … I would talk to some people about it when it came up. I’ve met some Israelis when travelling and stuff, and then we’ve just had conversations, which have been interesting,
However, ‘organising’, being part of a bigger group, means that you’re able to move much more, and share the responsibility.
Social media, even though it is not always a good thing, has proven to be actually a really important, effective method of spreading the word. You can feel like it’s useless that your story is about Palestine or whatever, but if Instagram suddenly becomes completely covered in posts about Palestine, and all the stories you click through mention it… no one can ignore it.
I think we saw that today with the ‘All Eyes on Rafah’ post that went viral in everyone’s story.
Then, you know, you just can’t ignore it, no one can ignore it. No.
Why is it so important that we don’t ignore it and that we keep posting on the conflict, and keep mentioning the genocide?
Because, that’s probably what they’re hoping for?
Yeah… It’s been going on for almost eight months. I mean, they’re just waiting for people to become tired of it. They keep giving small promises, small condemnations of specific Israeli attacks like they did with the recent one in Rafah and like they did when the aid workers were killed a few months ago.
They just keep going, like, business as usual, but hoping that people will get a little satisfied with that kind of stuff, and then they are hoping that people stop going to protests, stop sharing, and let it go on in silence.
We just can’t allow that to happen. For the people who are suffering right now. They have no chance of ignoring it.
When it comes to your mental health, how are you feeling? It must be a lot to see all of these terrible things flashing by everyday, and then to continuously choose to actively engage with it. You are very consciously choosing not to ignore it.
I was really struck by the videos from the tent camps in Rafah that were shared across the internet this week. That was the first time in a long time I felt very shaken . I think I’ve become quite decoupled from the images I have seen. We’ve gotten so used to seeing violent images. It’s almost like: “Oh, yeah… another dead body.”Some of those images from Rafah were so extreme that it really shook me.
I think being here at the encampment helps, to share these emotions, and to have a feeling like you are counteracting it somehow. I have been stressed, especially with the media attention and having to live both my normal life and my activist life, which both really moved into the encampment, especially in the beginning.
Then again, community really is the solution to all.
Does it make you feel empowered?
Yeah.
Well, I am sure there are many people very proud of you, and the student group, and everything that you have been doing.
We’ve also received images and messages from Gaza, and we had live interviews and live talks from the West Bank, and from Jerusalem. Just hearing Palestinians telling us, thank you, and keep going. You have never felt it on a personal level like that… to really hear from someone who explains why it matters so much. That is something else…
What is next? Because it does not just end with the university calling back its investments.
More of what we have been doing. You can tell that when it adds up after so many months, it does have an overall impact. We just demonstrated at a lecture with the Foreign Minister. The things he said, he would not have said six months, or even three months ago. His rhetoric has changed a lot. I think the global movement has forced politicians to speak and think differently. He was not ready to call it a genocide, since there is no legal declaration yet, but he was not denying it, like Joe Biden. Our Foreign minister did not deny it today. He said: we are still waiting [on the definition].
So you feel like the landscape has changed?
Yes, I feel like it got more normalised [to say genocide].
So yeah, we keep going. We have plans for next week, to focus on the academic boycott. To continue claiming our demands. After the university here, it is important to fight against the other universities and the government. Hopefully, we will start seeing some really big changes.
Answers have been modified for grammar and length, but content remains unedited.
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