24 March 2024
A Canadian student from McGill University who has been an indefinite hunger strike for the past 34 days was admitted to hospital after she fainted on Saturday, Middle East Eye reported citing student organisers.
Rania Amine, an undergraduate student at McGill, who began an indefinite hunger strike on 19 February, is understood to be stable and under observation.
Organisers said that Amine went to the hospital for IV fluids when she fainted and doctors advised she be hospitalised. The students declined to disclose the name of the hospital for Amine’s safety.
Amine is one of two students currently on an indefinite hunger strike to demand that the university both divest from defence companies directly or indirectly supporting the Israeli military as well as end its associations with four Israeli universities.
Around 15 other students have been engaged in a hunger strike on a rotational basis since 19 February.
According to the organisers of the hunger strike, McGill currently has around $20m invested in several defence companies, including Safran, a French air and defence company and Lockheed Martin, an American company that has sold fighter jets to Israel.
More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza and hundreds of thousands are facing famine since 7 October, when Hamas-led fighters launched an attack from the besieged territory.
The McGill students’ hunger strike movement comes on the heels of a referendum voted on in November 2023, in which a majority of the student body voted for the university to condemn Israel’s siege on Gaza, divest from companies that support the state of Israel and cut ties with Israeli universities.
One student, who only wanted to be identified as “Chadi”, has been on an indefinite hunger strike for the past 22 days. Chadi reportedly said that he began the strike because he did not want to participate in the Israeli occupation or the normalisation of ties with an apartheid state.
