Curse to Cure
The School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) was a colonial tool. It was founded in 1916 to provide training to Britain’s officers and government officials. It was an ideology factory designed to deliver a finished product that would govern empire and control the ‘brutes.’ It attempted to intellectualise and legitimise the ranking of humanity in order to exploit and extract from the Global South. The factory, famously described by imperialist Lord Curzon as part of the ‘furniture of empire,’ hummed for almost four decades.
Liberation – of sorts – followed WWII when a financially broke Britain ‘awarded’ several territories their nation status. All had been gouged of resources, many were geographically scarred by artificial borders, and countless would carry inter-generational trauma as a result of being colonised. SOAS cunningly adapted and promised the cure instead of the curse. After all, it knew the apparatus of colonial oppression and theft better than most – why not educate to solve the ills of colonialism instead of administering them? Curriculum-as-decolonisation was embraced, albeit through a western lens, as the institution attempted to atone for its sins.
The tired knowledge of empire was replaced by forward-looking, forward-thinking learning that supposedly positioned a new world order at its core. The updated curriculum appeared progressive and identified resistance, struggle, and revolution as legitimate political acts. Once-deleted histories of conquered territories were re-established, on occasion even celebrated. The makeover seemed to be working as SOAS boasted a growing and diverse student body.
Then cracks appeared. Most notably, in 2015 a BDS (Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions) referendum on cutting ties with apartheid Israel was overwhelmingly supported by the student body, but management refused to implement it. In the same year, students occupied The Brunei Gallery because it was funded by the Sultan of Brunei, the head of a country with a poor human rights record. In 2018, a 700-year-old Thai sculpture was gifted to the university by an American alumnus. The Buddha statue was accepted despite having no transactional history, casting doubt on its rightful ownership.
In February 2020, Adam Habib, a controversial individual with a history of anti-student sentiment, replaced SOAS director Valerie Amos, herself a divisive figure. Amos was called a ‘cog in the colonial machine’ due to her role in government and close association with the Tony Blair administration during the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. In March 2021, Habib used a racial slur with a student group. While he did apologise for causing offense, he never apologised for using the slur. Despite student demands for SOAS to act, Habib remains in office.
May 6th 2024
It was 212 days since Israel launched its genocidal attack on Ghazzah, and it showed no intention of stopping. There had been ceasefire marches and protests, UN debates and shuttle diplomacy, but Palestinians were still being slaughtered. It appeared many of the world’s governments were insincere in their attempts to bring about an end to the killing; some were openly supporting the butchery. Europe and the US continued to ship arms and munitions, while their politicians and government officials visited Israel, shaking hands, and posing for photo opportunities.
It is a small lawn, the size of an average petrol station forecourt, surrounded by buildings on three sides. It’s the sort of landmark you would pass and not remember – until May 6th when it became a liberated space.
“When we first arrived, we just had tents. Then we put up a rope barrier and then wooden pallets to protect those inside.”
The space serves as home, complete with its outdoor kitchen, community area and open-air classroom. Move around carefully, and as you meditate on this place you sense a sacredness, for it holds not only hope but also sorrow. A dozen Palestinian flags flutter like unsettled souls, searching for home; as the wind drops, they droop, exhausted. A board, unintentionally resembling a tombstone, lists seven handwritten demands of SOAS. Attached to a tent is a piece of pure white cloth, with Rafaat al Areera written in blood red. Areera is a past SOAS student, executed in Ghazzah by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in December 2023.
I linger by the board. There is something very human about it – not just the handwriting but the life-affirming nature of the demands. I imagine a thousand Palestinian voices, a perfect chorus, asking SOAS to act, to save them. Their words echo in my mind:
- Disclose all SOAS investments
- Divest from companies complicit in the genocide
- Terminate banking with Barclays (the bank provides billions of pounds worth of investment and loans to arms companies selling weapons and military technology to Israel)
- Boycott academic institutions who are complicit with the genocide
- Commit to support Palestine in rebuilding its education sector
- Guarantee students free expression
- Advocate for an immediate arms embargo and ceasefire
While the encampment has received plenty of support there have been some detractors.
“We have faced harassment and a number of assaults – from Zionists, the police, who visited us in the middle of the night, and even some university staff.’
What keeps you going I ask.
“We acknowledge our responsibilities as students to keep the attention on the genocide. Everyday we’re here increases the pressure on SOAS, and they feel our presence.”
Possession Order
It is a 4,300-word statement describing SOAS’s opposition and objection to the liberated zone. It is contradictory in parts, selectively and condescendingly quotes Martin Luther King, and spouts process and procedure in an effort to excuse SOAS of moral accountability. It speaks of protest but only in accordance with accepted ‘guidelines.’ The document, which was issued on July 12th 2024, can be reduced to one word: oppression. It has an authoritarian feel to it and clearly undermines the institution’s claim to be a champion of emancipation.
There is little doubt the statement will become a controversial and embarrassing artefact for SOAS in future years. For now, it served as a warning shot: a possession order was being sought and the camp would be expunged.
On Monday August 5th, Ghazzah’s Civil Defence agency uncovered eighty bodies buried in an unmarked grave, IOF murdered forty Palestinians in a twenty-four hour period, the EU Commission warned that targeting civil infrastructure constituted a war crime after a water treatment plant in Rafah was destroyed by IOF, human rights group B’Tselem released a report concluding there was ‘systemic’ torture of thousands of Palestinians held in IOF detention centres, and Israel’s Finance Minister Smotrich said deliberately ‘strengthening [illegal Israeli] settlements’ would prevent any notion of Palestinian statehood.
On the same day bailiffs served a possession order and cleared out the occupants of the SOAS encampment. The liberated space had been held for ninety-one days.
We Took What We Could Carry
“We moved to a second camp, on the other side of the campus.”
[Camp relocation can be seen here https://www.instagram.com/p/C-V4mmKO70u/ ]
The students, about a dozen in number, were undeterred and by Monday evening a new liberated zone had been secured. A patch of grass, smaller than the first, and a short walk from the original encampment was quickly populated with half-a-dozen red tents. The new space lacked some of the infra-structure but adequately served as a site of resistance and solidarity. The seven demands of SOAS remained on show and the students settled in for the night.
The group spent most of Tuesday trying to secure possessions that had been left at the first encampment, which was now fenced off. The atmosphere had changed – more security, less helpful. Without their belongings and camp equipment the new location was vulnerable. With no barriers securing its boundaries, access was easy and unrestricted.
“We were woken at 6am on Wednesday by a team of private bailiffs who said they were carrying out a common law eviction. We had 30 minutes to pack our bags and leave. The bailiffs moved in, and force was used to move us out.”
Wednesday was not a good look for SOAS: individuals were dragged across the grass, carried by four, sometimes five bailiffs. It was physical, forceful, and clumsy. No SOAS senior administrative staff or faculty were present.
“We took what we could carry. We walked towards Torrington Square on the edge of the campus, eventually settling in Byng Place opposite Euston church. It’s council land.”
Since Wednesday the students have busily constructed their third liberated zone. The new set-up includes an easel and whiteboard that provides daily updates from Ghazzah, wooden pallets mark the camp’s boundaries, and banners continue to challenge SOAS to act against the genocide.
“We will not stop; we will not rest.”
Hypocrisy at SOAS
“They [SOAS] have sanitised history. They remove the historical actions and deeds that allowed people to acquire the knowledge they [SOAS] espouse about in their lectures.”
For decades SOAS has profited from depicting itself as a comrade to the world’s oppressed. It purported to be an intellectual torchbearer for resistance and liberation, claiming it had coded how struggles are waged and won, and how the shackles of suppression are thrown off. Bizarrely, today it is SOAS who are stifling struggle and oppressing dissent.
Palestine is the epicentre in the fight against western imperialism. For decades it has experienced land and resource theft, settler occupation, racism and apartheid, and the brutal denial of agency and self-determination by Israel and its western sponsor states. Today, Ghazzah is at the mercy of every one of the ‘master’s tools’ as colonial powers, and their garrison outpost, Israel, attempt to amputate a people from their land.
SOAS boasts it is a place that ‘empowers students to question the global status quo and find solutions to the issues facing the world today.’ One group of students did just that – and far from empowering their enquiry SOAS policed, repressed and removed them from its campus.
I return to the original liberated zone, the one the size of a petrol station forecourt. It is early morning, quiet. The small area of soil has been made hallow ground by the students who camped here, who gave voice to a genocide, and who held the thousands of Palestinian souls murdered, butchered, and slaughtered while SOAS engaged in pedantic politics and vindictive behaviours. Far from being expansive and global, SOAS has shrunk and is again provincial.
History won’t be kind to the current administration, and I leave wondering whether colonialism can ever truly rehabilitate itself.
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©2024 Sul Nowroz – Real Media staff writer
