Violent arrest at the University of Manitoba exemplifies repression of campus Palestine solidarity

University campuses internationally from the US, to Germany, to Indonesia, have been sites of student solidarity actions for Palestine since October 2023. At many campuses, actions have taken the form of demonstrations or marches. In 2024, students formed encampments that lasted several weeks or months during 2024. Some of the most enduring activities took place in universities in the US, Canada, Australia, and other nations that maintain Israel as a military partner for their own regional, imperial interests. Students across these campuses revealed a highly intricate military-academic-industrial-complex through the business and research relationships of their universities with weapons industries, Israeli companies, and Israeli universities. In doing so, they uphold the oppressive, apartheid status quo in Palestine since 1948, as well as the current genocide in Gaza.

 

In response to the popularity, spread, and impact of student actions, university administrations the world over—pressured by pro-Israel groups on campus, donors, the state, and their imbrication with the lucrative weapons industries—have used the police and private campus security to clamp down on political expression related to Palestine, from revoking degrees from students, to suspending them, to violently attacking them during protests. While universities place high stock in their “brands,” they seem strangely unconcerned with (or perhaps oblivious to) the reputational damage to themselves by consistently repressing their own students’ rights to political expression. 

 

Students targeted for pro-Palestine expression

 

In the Canadian context, this has happened not only at larger universities, in larger urban centres such as Toronto, but across the country, including in the Canadian prairies. In the winter of 2023, a nursing student at the University of Manitoba, Arij Al Khafagi, was suspended for posting a comment online that was critical of the IDF. Al Khafagi was also pulled from the College of Nursing and from her position as President of the Nursing Students Association. She fought the case publicly, and won. 

 

In an interview in August, UM Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) co-president Hussein Chokr noted that there were several students suspended at the time who chose not to challenge their cases or to make them public, “in fear that it will harm them more, if they fight” such as “possibly being completely terminated from the university. According to Chokr, “Arij isn’t an isolated incident, there were more that happened, but Arij was the only one who made it public.”  Chokr, whose activism for Palestine in Winnipeg began with the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba (CPAM) weekly rallies, views the goals of the UM SJP as “building alliances with different student clubs, trying to create a strong base of students on campus, ensuring that they have all the resources to protect themselves [legally].”

 

Chokr has been attacked physically by counter-protesters at rallies as he is recognized for his Palestine solidarity activities and says that he is smeared verbally by Students Supporting Israel (SSI) at UM, an organization that refers to itself as “the Zionist umbrella for students on campus.”

 

Victoria, the former University of Manitoba Student Union (UMSU) Vice-President Advocacy was among those working to support the case of Al Khafagi’s reinstatement and was part of the student encampment set up in 2024 at UM. Victoria said the following, in the same August interview:

 

I have some experience with the university bureaucracy, so I’ve been trying to give my areas of expertise to help this out, from the encampment, to calling out the university for their investments, and different complicit corporations, [to] a variety of peaceful advocacy. I used to help with... a group on campus called Decolonize U Manitoba that aims to stop the ongoing harms that our university is perpetuating, whether it be here or across the world.

 

During the encampment, Victoria received direct threats from UM Security Services, and specifically from Gordon Perrier, the Director of Security Services at UM, who was previously a Deputy Police Chief with the Winnipeg Police Service.

 

I was the police liaison [for the encampment]. On the third day, Gord... called us. We said we’d be there until 11pm... he said, “if you are not out of there by 11pm, we’re going bring in the cops, we’re going to drag you out, we’ll break your knee caps, and it’ll be over for you guys.” Me and the person that was on the phone... typed this [out], we posted on the Internet, we mobilized people, so much so that the Winnipeg Police had to provide an official response and say “no, we’re not coming there.” 

 

After that, Gord Perrier, the head of security, started telling people in the movement and students at the encampment to not allow me to speak on the phone with the security or to talk to the police because I was making them look bad and I’m a bad person to work with. But it’s really because I was telling people their rights. 

 

UMSU has been working with Gord Perrier and Security Services to create a file on Victoria, who has now been banned twice from running for student union candidacy. They cite specific disruptions at UMSU meetings that other students undertook, at which Victoria was not present.

 

Arrested for political expression on campus

 

Al Khafagi’s convocation in 2025 had additional significance because of the success of her reinstatement to the Nursing program and had invited everyone who supported her case and the Palestinian cause. Below, Victoria recounts the events that took place before and during the ceremony.

 

The President of the University came outside of the administration building, and I approached him, because I used to work for the Student Union. I’ve had multiple lobby meetings with administrators at the University. They know me... because I’ve done advocacy at the University. I got the University to provide free menstrual products on campus and I secured a $450,000 funding grant for open educational resources. I went up to him very peacefully, and I asked, “hello, President Benarroch, does U of M have any plans to divest from the companies that are complicit in the genocide in Palestine?” He turned and walked away, ignored us. 

 

Thirty minutes later... I walk into the building [where the convocation was taking place]. Within ten seconds of me entering the building, one security officer was on her phone pointing at me. Then I walked up one flight of stairs and they had a guard waiting at the top saying, “you need to come with me.” I asked, “why, what did I do, who are you?” He said, “these are just the orders I’ve been given.” Then the head of security [Gord] walked in. He said “Victoria, we know what you’re here to do, you’re going to cause a disturbance, and we’re going to charge you with a criminal offence if you cause a disturbance.” I said, “I’m here to watch my friend graduate, so that’s not a problem.” I started walking away from them. It was such a disproportionate use of force. I had a rolled-up sign, no weapon, no nothing. They had at least four armed security officers surrounding me. They had batons and pepper spray.

 

The important part is that these security officers didn’t exist on campus more than two years ago. These are a special type of provincial police force brought in specifically for post-secondary education and hospitals. The province entered this agreement with the U of M where they would sanction the security for it, but the [officers] are trained by the Winnipeg Police, and they have full powers of arrest. 

 

So they have four of them on me, they have the head of security on me, and then another person in a suit, who’s a security officer. The escalation point was that I was walking to my seat, and one of the security guys ran in front of me and blocked it with his body and said, “you’re not allowed to go down there, the whole gym is full.” It was at this point that Gord started grabbing my sign and said “you’re under arrest for preventing the breach of the peace,” which makes no sense at all. He was pulling it out of my hands, and I said “don’t touch me, get your hands off of me.” I had my phone up [filming him], so he basically just hit me, knocked it out of my hands, and then... grabbed my bicep and forearm together, and twisted it around my arm until I dropped to my knees. They had two other security officers pick me up off the ground, and the three of them... dragged me about ten to twenty metres on the upper deck of the University Athletics Centre. I was kicking and screaming, saying, “I haven’t done anything wrong, what is your just cause for arresting me?” At this point I started saying “Free Palestine.” 

 

They dragged me about twenty metres, past at least 25 people. The gym was packed and the ceremony had already started. They dragged me into a stairwell. I had asked at least five times what the just cause was, and they said, “once you stop crying we’ll tell you.” I fought to get my phone turned back on... which is lucky because they don’t have body cams and there is no CCTV in the area they took me into. They had me held on the ground while cuffing me, and said numerous inappropriate things to me, some of which I captured on video.

 

Victoria was ultimately placed in a holding cell at the U of M, threatened with the charges of trespassing, breaching the peace, causing a disturbance, and mischief. After two hours, the police charged Victoria only for the last of these charges. Less than two weeks later, the charges were dropped, as there was no evidence to proceed. The court said that UM was wrong in harassing Victoria for peaceful action. The UM administration has still not commented or apologized for the violent assault.

 

From the courts to the streets

 

The above cases are egregious and extreme. They are also not uncommon, with many comparable forms of punitive action taken for pro-Palestine activity across Canadian campuses, as well as high-profile cases in the US that took place during the 2024 encampments. They must be fought and won, so that students cannot not be punished for holding university administrations to account for their material and ideological support for genocide. Legal systems in the Canadian state have, in instances like this, been able to defend students from repressive actions against them by university administrations. 

 

However, this is far from guaranteed, particularly where international students can lose their visas and risk deportation if the university decides to remove their student status. More generally, the law as a tool of justice is notoriously open to interpretation and tends to be at the whim of those who are enforcing it. The law is misused and misinterpreted as standard practice in the Israeli courts to represent he interests of settlers against the Palestinians whose homes they are invading. 

 

More importantly, a mass movement to Free Palestine cannot be built on the legal system inside the very capitalist, imperialist Canadian state that contributes to the genocide in Gaza. While it is often necessary on an individual basis to use the legal means available to fight for principles such as freedom of expression or peaceful protest, it is critical that such cases do not get relegated to legal archives and then get forgotten. Where possible, they must be publicized and politicized to illustrate how commonplace they are, to elicit the outrage they deserve, and to be used as reasons to mobilize for the defense of dissent and protection of protest.