A group of current and former UWE students and Bristol-based citizens have contacted their MPs to request their support to review UWE accountable for the university’s involvement in the repression of student protests against the “UWE arms fair” and the obstruction of the subsequent campaign demanding an independent review.
If you want to join this action, please feel free to do so. We’ve pasted a template letter below, which you can use and adapt, after you’ve found who is your MP. Please cc us if/when you email your MP and keep us informed about their response: uwe.better.together [at] gmail [dot] com.
Dear <name of your MP>,
We are writing as part of wider group of Bristol citizens including current and former UWE students (*) to request your support to hold UWE accountable for the repression of “impeccable” protests against the DPRTE 2013 military and arms trade event on campus. We need your intervention because the demand for an independent review into such repression, made by student campaigners to the university’s Board of Governors in April 2014, continues to be ignored and dismissed by UWE, even though it is now backed by the university Branch of the lecturers’ union (UWE UCU).
On the 20th of November 2013, UWE hosted for the second time Defence Procurement Research Technology Exportability (DPRTE) in its Exhibition and Conference Centre (ECC) at Frenchay. Self-proclaimed “the UK’s leading Defence procurement event”, this annual military business and arms trade event is probably only surpassed in size by internationally (in)famousDefence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) held every two years in London.
DPRTE 2013 was protested by UWE students and Bristol citizens. On the one hand, the WesternEye, UWE’s student newspaper reported “Students stage ‘impeccable’ protest”. What went unreported, on the other hand, was the considerable hostility, as well as unjustified and disproportionate repression that protesters had to face. In particular, UWE’s Vice-Chancellor was seen at the protests personally intimidated protesters, UWE’s Head of Security was seen taking pictures of protesters, and UWE allowed police and intelligence-gathering police far from any protest, after all protests had ceased, to intimidate, harass and gather intelligence on student activists.
Following a national student demonstration at UWE Bristol in April 2014, the Clerk of UWE’s Board of Governors emailed that the open letter sent by the student campaign to demand, justify and outline an independent review of the above-mentioned events had been transmitted to the Governors. However, on 16 October 2014, at the occasion of UWE’s “distinguished address” featuring the CEO of the UK’s sixth largest arms company, the university spokesperson stated that ““The activists’ call for an independent enquiry last November was not supported at the time.” Meanwhile, neither the student campaign nor UWE UCU received any answer to the demand for an independent review.
We are concerned by how UWE handled the protests against DPRTE 2013, including its direct involvement in the repression of its own peaceful students on campus. We are further concerned by the university’s continued dismissal of the subsequent campaign demanding an independent review into such repression. We thus ask for your help to hold UWE accountable and start by requesting UWE to answer our open letter (attached). Without your intervention, we are concerned that the health and safety, democratic and political issues that the student campaign has been trying to raise since November 2013 will continue to be stifled, and that UWE may perpetuate such an anti-democratic stance while portraying itself as a democratic institution aiming to champion progressive social change.
Yours sincerely,
