LONDON: Students at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge have set up encampments in support of Palestine, The Times reported on Monday.

Around 50 have refused to leave the lawn of King’s College, Cambridge, while students have also declared a “liberated zone” outside Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum.

A banner hung outside King’s College read: “Welcome to the people’s university for Palestine.” Chants of “stop the bombing now” have also been heard on the campus.

The protests have been organized by Oxford Action for Palestine and Cambridge for Palestine.

They are demanding transparency about the universities’ financial links to Israel, which they have described as a “settler colonial state,” and are calling for the end of all investments and endowments from Israeli and Israel-linked companies.

“We have set up camp in university grounds, and we will not move until our demands are met,” the groups said in a statement, adding that the universities are legitimate targets for protests because of their “role in the British empire and its disastrous colonial legacies.”

The Times reported that protesters had been given an itinerary for their involvement including “de-escalation training” and “banner-making.”

A spokesperson for Cambridge University said it is for the college to decide whether to call the police, adding: “The university is fully committed to academic freedom and freedom of speech within the law and we acknowledge the right to protest.

“We ask everyone in our community to treat each other with understanding and empathy. Our priority is the safety of all staff and students.

“We will not tolerate antisemitism, Islamophobia and any other form of racial or religious hatred, or other unlawful activity.”

The relatively small UK protests come after nearly 2,000 people were arrested across the US after widespread demonstrations on over 130 American university campuses about Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.

MANILA: President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on Monday that Manila will not use offensive equipment in the disputed South China Sea, after China’s coast guard used high-pressure water cannon on Philippine vessels last week.

The Philippines and China have had several confrontations in the resource-rich area, where Beijing has used water cannon against Filipino vessels in incidents Manila has described as harassment and dangerous.

The latest in a string of maritime clashes occurred on April 30 as tensions continued to rise in the vital waterway that Beijing claims almost in its entirety despite a 2016 international arbitration ruling that rejected its assertion.

“What we are doing is defending our sovereign rights and our sovereignty in the West Philippine Sea. And we have no intention of attacking anyone with water cannons or any other such offensive (weapons),” Marcos said Monday.

“We will not follow the Chinese coast guard and the Chinese vessels down that road because it is not the mission of the navy (or) our coast guard to start or to increase tensions … Their mission is precisely the opposite, it’s to lower tensions.”

Philippine vessels have been regularly targeted by Chinese ships in areas of the South China Sea that are internationally recognized as belonging to the Philippines, which Manila calls the West Philippine Sea.

The Philippines’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs last Thursday summoned Zhou Zhiyong, China’s deputy chief of mission, after the incident left a Philippine coast guard vessel and another government boat damaged.

It was the 20th protest Manila has made against Beijing’s conduct in the South China Sea this year alone, while more than 150 diplomatic complaints have been made over the past two years.

Marcos said the Philippines will continue to respond to South China Sea incidents through diplomatic means.

Marcos’s statement comes days after the defense ministers of the Philippines, the US, Japan and Australia met in Hawaii and issued a joint statement on their strong objections to the “dangerous and destabilizing conduct” of China in the South China Sea.