Just over a dozen protesters are on scene at the University of Manitoba campus, erecting the first tents that will serve as home-base for a planned pro-Palestinian encampment.
The protest site is located in the quad at the Fort Garry campus, which has been cordoned off by a large circle of metal fencing.
By 9 a.m., a handful of security officers stood watch as protesters wearing keffiyehs — checkered scarfs that symbolize solidarity with Palestinians — drove tent poles into the ground and unloaded supplies intended to sustain them for what is expected to be a three-day event.
Students for Justice in Palestine, a group at the University of Manitoba, set up an encampment in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza in the quad at the Fort Garry campus Tuesday morning. (Mike Deal / Free Press)
Students for Justice in Palestine, a group at the university, announced plans to establish the protest site last week. It joins a wave of similar sites erected at Canadian campuses.
The encampment will run from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. each day, group spokesperson Mona Zangana told the Free Press last week.
The group has issued an assortment of demands for the university, asking it to implement safety measures for Palestinian students, boycott Israeli institutions and end student-exchange programs with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Event organizers said they would speak with media at 10 a.m.