Pisa, students protest against contracts between universities and Leonardo: “No to relations with those who arm the Turkish army against the Kurds”
Occupation for 48 hours of Polo Carmignani, assemblies, mobilization. The students of the University of Pisa who recognize each other in Autonomous University Collective and who made this decision after a discussion on the situation in Rojava and of the peoples of the Kurdistan. The main reason for the protest is the relationship between the Pisan university and the Leonardopartner company for research projects with the Engineering department and which on the other side has supplied and still supplies most of the arms to the Turkish armysuch as the T129 “Atak” helicopters used several times by the Turks during the attacks against the Kurds in different areas, from Turkey everything’Iraq at the Syria. In a note, the students of the Autonomous Collective dismissed the university as “directly involved in the crimes carried out by the dictator Erdoğan” and we ask for clarity on the collaborations between the university and Leonardo. “We want to know for whom and on what basis we develop our research projects – continues the press release – and above all we want the immediate termination of any relationship between the University of Pisa and deadly companies such as Leonardo”.
The protests against the partnership between UniPi and Leonardo started some time ago: also in 2019, for example, on the occasion of the Work meeting organized by the Tuscan university, when the students had protested against the presence of a stand of the state company in the defense sector and also for other meetings within the university to which engineers from the company had been invited to speak. Now the request to the rector Richard Zucchi is to take a clear position and withdraw the agreements with Leonardo: “We invite the entire academic community to mobilize in any form in support of the Kurdish people and the Rojava revolution”.
The university in an official statement expressed the full solidarity to the Kurds but he added nothing on the future of the relationship between the university and Leonardo: “The University of Pisa expresses its strong reproach for these attacks, is in solidarity with the affected Kurdish communities, requests that all military operations in the area stop and that a dangerous escalation is avoided: instead a process of real appeasement of the region, with the involvement of all stakeholders”.
During the hours of occupation (which ended on Saturday) the students and part of the citizens of Pisa gathered on Friday in front of the Tower of Pisa for an action of solidarity towards the Kurdish population, with banners and smoke bombs, in a first action of mobilization for full support towards the peoples in Kurdistan: “If with the occupation of the University we wanted to launch the will to mobilize ourselves, with this action in front of one of the best known and most visited places in the world, we want the message to be international: we are in solidarity with the peoples in Kurdistan and with the Rojava revolution, we will continue to mobilize to defend the possibility of imagining a different way of living and organizing society”.
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The photo was posted on the Facebook page Autonomous University Collective Pisa
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