Wage Peace - Disrupt War

Strategic, bold, direct and discursive action to disrupt militarism in Australia and our region.

Sarah Joy

Demilitarise UQ: A Petition to UQ from an Autonomous Student Group

This petition was constructed in May 2024 at the height of the Student Encampments. UQ students were camping out. An article comes out from Australian anti-militarist independent journal Declassified Australia pointing to millions being spent by the US Department of Defence.

Demilitarise UQ was a campaign by students at UQ aimed at exposing research arrangements with the US Department of Defence.

This petition demands that UQ pledge to cease receiving funding from ANY foreign government’s defence department. Boeing, a company that profits off of genocides in places such as Palestine and West Papua, has a centre at the St Lucia campus, and after a recent report from Declassified Australia detailing funding received from foreign governments, the lack of integrity of the University can no longer be questioned. 

The report confirmed that the United States Defence Department has funded $394 million to Australian universities via grants and contracts since 2007. The article revealed that the University of Queensland was the second-highest recipient of this funding during this time- at $60.5 million.  

The same institutions that educate our populous should not be allowed to profit off of violence, and it is urgent that their support of the military industrial complex ceases.

SIGN HERE TO DEMILITARISE UQ

The university requested to meet. Here’s the letter we sent back outlining the broader issues.

24/05/2024For the Queensland University Leadership

To: Andrew Flannery

Chief Operating Officer

UQ

Dear Andrew

Thank you for your response to Demilitarise UQ following delivery of our open letter. The letter has more than 1100 signs.  We would like to meet as soon as possible for a preliminary meeting before the UQ Student General Meeting on Wednesday. Please propose a date and time.

These are the issues for discussion:

  1. Boeing is the key profiteer in the genocide in Palestine. Bomb kit parts for Boeing made bombs are designed and made in Brisbane. UQ research would most definitely have been used for this killing instrument. Boeing is THE KEY profiteer from this genocide and has an invested interest in promoting and prolonging and wars in general.  
  1. The recent Declassified Australia report confirmed that the United States Defence Department has funded $394 million to Australian universities via grants and contracts since 2007. The article revealed that the UQ was the second-highest recipient of this funding during this time – at $60.5 million. The US Defence Department operationalises military research and weapons sales on behalf of the “military industrial complex”. US weapons have been overwhelmingly used to kill millions of civilians during this period. 
  1. We see alarming signs of “state capture” as described in the Confronting State Capture Report (2022) https://australiandemocracy.org.au/statecapture. It asserts that the hollowing out and repurposing of institutions is one of six key mechanisms by which private actors exercise power to shape policies in the service of their own narrow interest. E.g. Dr Greta Nabbs Keller is the deputy director of a “Defence Research Unit”. Greta Nabbs Keller is ex-military. In her position she has paved the way for Gen Mick Ryan to occupy an adjunct role as a “lecturer”. There is no academic consensus for his ‘opinions’. It is believed that he serves the Pentagon and weapons industry interests
  1. We are concerned that more Australian and US Defence Department, military and weapons industry money comes through the opaque UQ Corporation which is not accountable to the public or public education.
  1. We also see signs that the engineering department has been militarised. We have heard from students that potentially, most engineering academics are current and past military. Many are working in weapons development. First year engineers are recruited with a discourse on sustainability and ideal contribution to society.  By second year, they are funnelled via ‘projects’ to military and “space” oriented work. This perspective has been articulated in a letter to the Chancellor, by Adjunct Professor David Hood and Emeritus Professor Colin Apelt – both long serving members of the Engineering faculty (letter attached).
  1. Regarding “Defence” which is used as an excuse for this militarism: The climate crisis is the only real security threat for Australians. 
  1. UQ should demand proper funding from the government for the education of students.  

These are things that we think should be urgently addressed if the university is turned around from being a place that explicitly facilitates genocide.

Students for Palestine have a set of clear demands, which we fully support.  The university should have no ties with weapons companies, nor take money from foreign governments.

Yours sincerely,

Lachlan Booth

Demilitarise UQ

24-5-2024

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Australia sends 155mm shell exports to Germany; Probably to the IDF.

Israel requires more ammunition and artillery shells to continue the genocide. And  Australia is supplying them.

It appears that Germany is key in providing munitions according to this report by Berlin researchers Forensic Architecture.

We assert that Australian made 155mm shells from the German-run (Rheinmetall) factory at Maryborough, Queensland are providing shells to Germany which are being directly transferred to the IDF in Israel to bomb Gaza and perpetrate the genocide.

Researcher  Shir Hever discusses the importance of this report here in this interview with Zain Raza.

https://www.fdd.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/fdd-memo-how-to-ensure-israel-has-the-weapons-it-needs.pdf

In answer to a question on notice to the Queensland Government regarding production at the Maryborough Rheinmetall Nioa factory, the Treasurer answered:

“I am advised that all current production from the Rheinmetall NIOA Munitions facility in Maryborough will assist RWM to fulfill a large scale order from the German Government.”

From the defense of Germany at the ICJ we learned something: the German government said that it plans to sell 10,000 120mm tank shells to Israel, but not from Rheinmetall directly, but rather from the warehouses of the German army. In the defense, the lawyers said that the military did not authorize the sale.

There is a shortage in these shells around the world, which require special materials and special tools to make. So by importing 155mm shells from other countries (Rheinmetall has subsidiaries in Spain, South Africa and more, not just in Australia), the German military can fill its stores and sell the surplus to Israel.

This arrangement  makes it possible for Germany to replenish its munition stores, and sell surplus ammunition to Israel. 

It’s unclear how the artillery munitions are transported. It appears mostly by sea. But potentially some by air.

“In fact, according to one senior Pentagon official, the quantity of weapons sent was so significant that the Department of Defense sometimes struggled to find sufficient cargo aircraft to deliver the systems.”