A group of alumni and friends attended the University of Queensland (UQ) Senate meeting on April 18, to challenge the university’s involvement with the weapons corporation, Boeing.
Ten people entered and addressed the Senate — a key decision-making council of the university — holding a banner which read: “Boeing Arms Genocide”.
Spokesperson Margaret Pestorius said the interruption at its bimonthly meeting was to “remind” the UQ Senate that Boeing was one of several weapons corporations receiving $30 billion each year from the federal government for new military projects in a time of peace.
The visitors made a series of speeches exploring the impacts of Boeing’s destructive endeavours.
Pestorius said the Senate needed to “face up to” allowing a weapons company “right into the heart of young people’s education”. She also criticised the attempt to normalise the “militarisation of education and our society”.
Boeing is the world’s third largest weapons corporation: it is running a hypersonic missile program at the Boeing Institute on the St Lucia campus.
“Boeing’s commercial operations are about killing people,” Pestorius said. “Boeing weapons kill ordinary people in Yemen and Palestine and our own neighbours in West Papua.”
Pestorius said the group will continue to campaign against Boeing until it is recognised as the “Adani” of the corporate weapons industry.
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