University officials said Monday that the number of tents at the pro-Palestinian encampment on McGill University’s downtown campus tripled since Saturday.
Montreal protesters set up about 20 tents Saturday afternoon with the intent of staying on McGill University’s lower field “indefinitely.” They joined a wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations held on campuses across the U.S. who want to see universities divest from companies with business ties to Israel.
In a statement published Monday, the university’s media relations office said the situation with protesters on campus had “shifted significantly.”
“We have become aware that many of them, if not the majority, are not members of the McGill community,” the statements reads.
University officials also said they saw video evidence of “some people using unequivocally antisemitic language and intimidating behaviour” on campus.
CBC’s Kwabena Oduro reports live from McGill University in Montreal, where pro-Palestinian protesters say they plan to stay at their encampment on campus until the university divests from Israel.
“We condemn this in the strongest possible terms and will act quickly to investigate,” university officials wrote.
Sasha Robson, a member of Independent Jewish Voices McGill who was at the encampment overnight Monday, told CBC News there were no reports of issues overnight.
Zeca Eufemia, a McGill student and teaching assistant who was among those protesting, said the encampment had, indeed, tripled in size, as the university statement claimed.
“We have had people coming in from the community,” he said. “These allegations of antisemitism, I have been here since Saturday, I have not seen any of that.”
Eufemia said supporters from other universities had come to the McGill encampment. He said he was protesting to ensure that money from the tuition he pays doesn’t go to companies that could make weapons that will be used in Gaza.
“We are making our voices heard,” he told CBC.
The protesters have published a list of investments they object to, which includes approximately $20 million of investments that McGill says it holds in a variety of companies, including Lockheed Martin, an aerospace company that manufactures weapons used by the Israeli military.
McGill publishes a list of its investments online, showing an endowment of more than $1 billion invested in various securities.
Sasha Boucher, a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party who was not a McGill student but said he was at the encampment in solidarity with Palestinians, said the protesters felt support from the general public.
“We have actually more food than we know what to do with. We’re telling people to stop bringing us stuff — for now, we’re going to need more stuff later,” he said. “It’s been going very well, there’s a very strong sense of solidarity here.”
Throughout the weekend, McGill University’s media relations office said the protest had been peaceful. On Saturday, officials said a university security staff had instructed protesters to remove their tents, but they refused.
Monday morning, the Montreal chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement called out on Instagram for supporters to come to the encampment.
The group’s Instagram post said police presence was increasing on campus and asked for support to “help students protect the encampment.”
Nanre Nafziger, an assistant professor in McGill’s department of integrated studies in education, said she came to the encampment to support the protesting students.
“We stand by them,” she said. “They have the right to protest. They have the right to make demands of the university and we also want to stand by and let them know we are in support of them fully.”
Pearl Eliadis, a human rights lawyer and associate professor at McGill, told CBC Montreal’s Daybreak in an interview that the university may go to court to seek an injunction to have the protesters removed.
“The question really is the extent to which McGill is prepared to go up against people who are protesting peacefully,” she said, “and I underline the word peacefully because any change from that means that they lose their right to protest.”