Masked protesters set up pro-Palestine camp at UBC Okanagan

A pro-Palestine protest camp has popped up at the UBC Okanagan campus, joining numerous other encampments on campuses across North America.

Students and community members set up the camp at UBCO at 5 a.m. on Monday.

The protestors are joining a growing number of encampments on post-secondary institutions across the country that "are standing in solidarity with Palestine amid the ongoing Gaza conflict," said organizers in an email.

There are roughly 30 people at the UBCO encampment, the vast majority of them masked. None of the participants were willing to speak to a Castanet reporter and others tried to prevent news cameras from filming them. Nobody involved would provide their names or a group spokesperson.

An anonymous email sent to local newsrooms from protest organizers say they are calling on UBC "to divest from Israel’s settler colonial occupation, ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians, and to join a global academic boycott of Israeli universities."

Protesters are also demanding the university "publicly condemn the ongoing genocide in no uncertain terms."

UBC's president, responding to an encampment at the Vancouver campus, said last week its endowment fund doesn't directly own any stocks that are the target of divestment demands.

Benoit-Antoine Bacon says the targeted companies are instead part of "pooled funds and managed by external investment managers," making up 0.28 per cent of the endowment fund UBC says is worth about $2.8 billion.

He says in a message posted online that the university would welcome a "respectful and robust discussion" with its students about the investments.

The camp at the Vancouver campus was set up on April 29.

-with files from The Canadian Press

Photo: Rob Gibson