OTTAWA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Canada's Quebec court on Wednesday rejected McGill University's request for an injunction to remove a pro-Palestinian encampment from the downtown campus in Montreal, local media reported.
In Canada, encampments started with 20 tents at McGill University in late April, followed by several others including University of British Columbia in Vancouver, University of Ottawa, Western University in Ontario and University of Toronto.
The demonstrators are "part of a North American movement present in a few dozen universities in the United States in connection with the current events in the Gaza Strip where tens of thousands of Palestinians have died, been injured or dispossessed by the Israeli army," Quebec Superior Court Justice Marc St-Pierre wrote in a six-page decision.
After hearing arguments on Monday, St-Pierre rejected the request, according to local media.
On Monday, one of McGill's lawyers argued that the injunction should be granted as a preventive measure to help protect members of the school's community.
St-Pierre disagreed, writing that he would not "issue an order of injunction as a preventive measure in the case where something purely hypothetical would happen in the future."
Late last week and over the weekend, University of Alberta in Edmonton and University of Calgary called in police to clear protest encampments within hours of tents going up.
In their statements, the universities said that they respect free speech but that the encampments violated trespassing rules and risked escalating into violence. ■