The Action Group at KTH for Boycott of Israel has sent the letter below to the Board of The Royal Institute of Technology.
Dick Urban Vestbro
Prof Emer
The state of Israel has for more than 45 years broken international law and neglected numerous UN resolutions. The crimes are many; continuous occupation of Palestinian land, displacement of unwanted inhabitants, an increasing number of illegal settlements, theft of water resources, destruction of agricultural land and olive groves, separation of Palestine by fences and the Apartheid wall, humiliation of Palestinians through hundreds of checkpoints etc.
KTH, the leading technical university in Sweden, has since 1998 a framework agreement with Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) for the exchange of students, teachers and researchers. In spite of warnings from the Action group, the Rector renewed the agreement in 2013 for a new five years period. The Technion is complicit in Israel’s violations of international law and the rights of the Palestinians, specifically by:
Designing military weapons and developing technologies that are used to drive Palestinians out of their land, repress demonstrations for their rights and put protestors in prison, and carry out attacks against the people in Lebanon, Gaza and elsewhere. The Technion is directly implicated in war crimes.
The Action Group for Boycott of Israel repeats its request that the KTH leadership must follow its ethical policy which is based on “democracy, equal values of individuals, human rights and freedom and an open discussion”. It should immediately repeal the framework agreement with Technion.
In addition to this the Action Group asks the KTH leadership to re-evaluate Bill Gates award as an Honorary Doctor at KTH.
For the Action Group at KTH for the Boycott of Israel
Jan-Erik Gustafsson
Associate professor