We, the undersigned Alumni of Lund University, strongly condemn the use of police violence and the forceful eviction of the peaceful student protest at the Palestinagård camp. The camp was more than a site of peaceful protests - it was a place where students self-organized lectures, movie screenings, shared food, and collective resources such as a library. In short, it was a place of learning that advocated for the “respect for the equal value of all human beings,” one of Lund University’s explicit core values.

On May 30th, many of us witnessed, in person and remotely, the police violently remove students from a peaceful demonstration on their own campus. Not only was the level of force used by the police completely disproportionate to the peaceful encampment of the students, but the police also deployed illegal techniques, including kneeling on the backs of students and chokeholds. The police partly justified their use of force with the false claim the students had thrown glass bottles at an ambulance. They only retracted this claim after contradictory testimony from the ambulance drivers.

Over 30 students were detained by the police, including the student’s medic, and at least two students injured during the eviction were denied medical attention. Students were also detained for unnecessarily long periods, many of them for around 6 hours and some of them, as of over 24 hours since the eviction, are still being detained. The police have refused to release information on where those still held are being detained, and many of them have been transported to and released from police stations in other cities, such as Helsingborg and Ystad.

We hold the university management responsible for exposing their own students to police violence. The university produced this situation by refusing to communicate in good faith with the students and closing down communication channels. It was by the University's decision that the camp was cleared. While this was supposedly done due to the doctoral conferment ceremony happening the next day, the university management could have worked with the camp to find a solution: they elected not to do so. The university management could have intervened at any time to protect the safety of its students. Instead, it stood by in implicit support of the police violence that unfolded in the center of its campus.

Lund University must take responsibility for its actions and attempt to rectify the situation to whatever extent possible. We echo Lund Academics for Palestine (LUAP) and demand that:

A concerted effort is deployed by Lund University’s management to protect its students from further harm, by engaging with the police immediately with the aim of ensuring that all detained students be released without prosecution, and all possible charges be dropped. Also, the University management must guarantee that no disciplinary action will be taken against any of the students within the university’s disciplinary framework.

A committee representing the university is created with the mandate to re-open the dialogue between Lund University and Lund University Students for Palestine, since neither the Vice-Chancellor, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor nor the Pro Vice-Chancellor have shown the capacity to engage in constructive dialogue with its students.

Vice-Chancellor Erik Renström, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Lena Eskilsson and Pro Vice-Chancellor Jimmie Kristersson are held accountable for exposing the students to police violence through a refusal to negotiate in good faith and inaction in the face of the decision of police to remove students.

As former students of Lund University, we cannot stand quietly by as the university acts with such blatant disregard for the safety of its current students.

Deeply concerned,

Lund University Alumni