On Sunday, 30 January, activists with the new Samidoun Hungary chapter organized a vigil in central Budapest to call for the freedom of imprisoned Palestinian students. Participants carried signs and pictures of Palestinian students locked behind bars in Israeli jails, calling for their immediate liberation.
Students in Hungary set up their display of information on Palestinian students and delivered speeches about the situation of Palestinian prisoners outside St. Stephen’s Basilica, the most well-known basilica in Budapest and a central gathering point in the capital city. As the new academic semester begins, over 300 Palestinian students are being denied access to their education due to the Zionist settler colonial occupation.
The protest aims to raise awareness about Palestinians’ right to education and the use of imprisonment as a colonial weapon against Palestinian students and youth. This is only the first event for Samidoun Hungary, and organizers are planning to expand the campaign and hold more demonstrations in the near future. Please contact Samidoun Hungary for more information about how you can get involved!
Hundreds of organizations have joined the #FreePalestinianStudents campaign, which calls for:
- Boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, including Israeli academic institutions, which are fully complicit in the systematic deprivation of Palestinian rights.
- Ending all military and economic aid, military transactions, joint projects and direct funding to the Israeli occupation regime by governments around the world.
- Challenging “normalization” programs that aim to legitimize Israeli occupation — this is an attempt to legitimize the criminalization and targeting of Palestinian students.
- Organizing to build direct links of solidarity with Palestinian students and the Palestinian student movement, to ensure that they will not be isolated from their global community of support despite all attempts by the Israeli occupation.
