This issue serves as an archive of the 110 days that students at the Australian National University spent at the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. It has been developed to mark a decisive moment in the history of social movements at ANU and, indeed, in the whole of so-called australia, and to bear witness to what took place, despite ongoing attempts to erase or sanitise the record.

Meetings were held almost every day at the Encampment, ranging from brief 15 minute check-ins to discussions lasting 5 hours.

Interview with a member of the Arab and Muslim community who supported and participated in the Gaza solidarity encampment.

In early 2024, as other student groups in Australia and elsewhere began establishing encampments on university campuses, students at the Australian National University (ANU) established the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Kambri.

Earlier this week, the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment participants invited me, as an NTEU representative, to spend a night in the encampment. I was honoured to accept, and last night endured Canberra’s chilly overnight temperatures to stand (and sleep) in solidarity with university students and their rights to peacefully protest, and to exercise their academic freedom and freedom of speech.

Like most crucial moments in my life, I don’t notice them until after they’ve passed. It was May 8th 2024, and it was the ANUSA AGM (ANU’s Student Union annual general meeting).

Genocide in Gaza is the moral and political issue of our day, from which the leaders of many governments and other institutions around the world have abdicated moral and political responsibility.

Being part of the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment media team was a unique experience, fast-paced, high-stakes work carried out in constantly shifting, often suboptimal conditions. We were navigating a largely hostile media environment in which institutional statements were granted automatic legitimacy, while we had to fight for even the opportunity to be heard.

The ANU GAZA Solidarity Encampment represented one of the strongest grassroots movements on the university campus. It called for recognition from our national university demanding that its practice align with the ethics it teaches.

I’d love to know how many senior staff members at the Australian National University would call themselves humanitarians. I suspect a high number of them, given that the only way they seem able to sleep at night is by convincing themselves that the Socially Responsible Investment policy is sufficient.

Writing this on stolen Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country, where mass over-policing, youth detention, and deaths in custody are features of a system designed to dispossess.

The following is an interview conducted in October 2025 with a Senior Academic at ANU, and their reflections on the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment.

Too many images I can’t unsee;I feel like my heart is being stabbed and squeezed they killing my people every day overseas how you shoot a child while he’s begging to breathe

Aye, I know if I rap about Palestineand what’s going on, it won’t change a single thing.

On Reconciliation Day 2024, I awoke and glanced at my phone, a habit I had fallen into, and I saw a call out from the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment Instagram account. A showdown had begun between ANU students and staff, and security officers and police over the Encampment.

من أنت؟ حدثيني عن تجربتك في فلسطين مع الاحتلال الصهيوني

What does it mean to be an artist when you are a settler in the imperial core? I have been wrestling with this question for a long time, but the urgency of it has drastically increased since the beginning of the Gaza genocide.

The BIPOC Base at the Australian National University stands as one of the most significant achievements of the ANUSA BIPOC Department. Established through years of relentless advocacy by BIPOC student leaders, it was envisioned as a vital safe space where Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) students could exist free from the pervasive racism that continues to shape campus experiences.

While watching the first of many Senate estimates that the Australian National University was called to, many students learned that university management had established a Safe Space for Jewish students on campus. As a Jewish student on campus, I was shocked because I was not aware of the safe space and I did not have access to it.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of incidents that address some of the tactics used by the university in its attempts to shut down the Gaza solidarity encampment.

No work reflecting the Australian National University (ANU) Gaza Solidarity Encampment would be complete without stating first and foremost our unequivocal support for Palestinian liberation.

Sarah is an active member of the Palestinian community in Canberra. She has supported and helped students at the encampment enormously. This reflection is composed of excerpts of an interview where she reflects on the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment.

I’m exhausted, last night I couldn’t sleep; but when I did I could hear bombs in my dreams - nightmares situation, How could they be so evil? making bombs out of children and innocent people

When I first read بطاقـــــــــــــــة هويـــــــــــــــة (Identity Card), a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, I immediately connected to what Darwish signified and evoked through this poem; what living under a militarised occupation means

On Wednesday May 15th 2024, the 76th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, 7 ANU students were summoned to a meeting with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), Grady Venville (Gore 2024). What followed was a bizarre, McCarthyite show trial dressed up in condescendingly benign corporate-HR language.

I became involved with the student Encampment by cooking and providing meals. This was my way of thanking the students for standing up for Palestinian rights.

The ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment was an independent, grassroots collective of students, staff, alumni and general ACT community members who want to center what is happening in Gaza in a local context.

On April 29th 2024, we held our first Gaza Solidarity Encampment meeting on the balcony of the student union. As that day came to a close, many of us were zipping up our tents and wriggling into our sleeping bags.

1. That the ANU cut ties with all weapons manufacturing companies, starting with BAE systems, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, and place a moratorium on any such ties in the future.

On the 29th of April 2024, a series of color-clashing, rag-tag and misfitted tents popped up on ANU’s Kambri Green; a small field of grass located in the university’s central hub. I was among them. There was no permit secured and no long-term plan.

The ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment took place on Ngambri and Ngunnawal Land, where the legacy of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, as one of the longest ongoing protest sites for Indigenous rights, is impossible to ignore. First Nations here in so called australia have resisted colonisation for over two centuries.

Civil society has long been the arena where ordinary people contest power, demand justice, and force institutions to shift. Theorists describe it as the ‘space between state and market,’ but in practice it is the place where unions, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), student groups, faith communities and solidarity networks make their voices heard.