Thursday, 16 March
1:00 pm
Grote Markt
3000 Leuven, Belgium
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/143153512873326/
We will do an action headed to the University of Leuven to demand them to quit LAW Train. We will gather at the Grote Markt at 1PM on thursday 16/3 where we will stage some interrogations (Israeli style) and have banners and signs (make your own!) to show the university board that we do not accept the cooperation between Israel and the university.
What is LAW Train?
Law-Train is a research project which aims to enhance interrogation techniques in the fight against international drug crime. It is funded by the European Union Horizon2020 programme and half of the sum goes to the Israel National Police and Ibar Ilan University, which coordinates the project.
This project legitimizes and facilitates the repressive Occupation, the violation of international law and Human Rights. It is our conviction that the project should be juridically, ethically and morally revised.
-It is time for our university to take Human Rights and institutional context as seriously as academic freedom. Nowhere where these two questions asked:
Is the partner institution or organization implicated in serious or systematic violations of human rights?”
What is the risk that the activities undertaken in the context of the cooperation agreement could directly or indirectly contribute to the violation of one of the rights guaranteed in any of the Core International Human Rights Instruments? 2)
-Partners: Bar Ilan University & Israel National Police/
Bar Ilan University coordinates and stands in for the ethical supervision of the project. It was the first and hitherto only university to build an illegal settlement in Ariel, West-Bank.
Moreover, it has close ties to Shin Beth, the Israel Security Agency, which is feared for its torture methods, blackmail practices (forcing people e.g. to become an informer) 170 and other infringements on human rights. Shin Bet perfected torture techniques which afterwards were used by the American armed forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, the secret “black sites “ of the CIA and in Guantanamo Bay. Shin Bet operatives receive a B.A. from Bar-Ilan University after a mere 16 months.
The Bar Ilan University practices forms of discrimination against Palestinian students and allows teachers, such as dr. Mordechai Kedar, publicly promote the rape of wives and mothers of Palestinians as ‘deterrent’.
The Israeli National Police and Prison Service, controlled by the Ministry of Public Security, have been repeatedly denounced by Palestinian and international human rights organizations for systematic and ongoing violations of Human Rights and International Law in its practices. Since 1994, the UN Committee against Torture has consistently but unsuccessfully asked Israel for remedies. These methodologies are part of the Israeli system of repression, military control and racial discrimination (apartheid) against the Palestinian people; they are combined with practices of ‘administrative detention’ (preventive and without fair trial prison), arbitrary arrests and collective punishment, sometimes of children.
– The headquarters of the Israeli National Police is in Palestinian occupied territory in Jerusalem Est. Cooperation with these institutions legitimates and gives support to serious breaches of international law, in contradiction to the opinion on Israel’s Wall (2004) of the International Court of Justice.
This project ecognizes as legal the Israeli system of control and military repression, which includes illegal methodologies for ‘interrogation’, and assist in its maintenance. With that the EU and states violate their obligations under international law.
