Luna
Luna is a trans woman seeking asylum from Malaysia. Luna was enrolled as an international student when the University of Sydney threatened to suspend her for speaking the truth.
In January, while Zionist airstrikes across the besieged Gaza Strip were burying families and children under rubble, Luna wrote Palestine solidarity statements on classroom whiteboards. Using a green, non-permanent marker, she wrote that:
“USyd invests in weapons manufacturing (Thales, Lockheed Martin). USyd supports genocide in Gaza.
As of 13 January 2025, 46,600+ dead in Gaza. USyd cut ties with genocide.
USyd Vice Chancellor Mark Scott supports Gaza Genocide.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
In February, while occupation authorities were ethnically cleansing Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, the University of Sydney threatened Luna with suspension for scrawling solidarity messages on whiteboards. On Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott’s watch, USyd knowingly endangered her life with this threat of suspension. Had they suspended Luna, USyd would have notified the Department of Home Affairs, who would have cancelled her student visa. The Australian Border Force would then detain her in mandatory detention.
All of this occurred while USyd was celebrating 10 years of marching in the Sydney Mardi Gras parade (#USYDPride) and during the #Welcome Program, when the University welcomes #InternationalStudents (#StudentLife).
International Student Precarity
Luna and other international students come to Australia seeking a pathway to legal protections, education, or employment opportunities, and they pay exorbitant tuition (upwards of $20,000 each semester) to do so. While in Australia, international students face precarity in visa systems, expensive and insecure housing, workplace discrimination and exploitation, language barriers, and social isolation. USyd has power over their visas through their enrolment, deciding not just whether they pass or fail classes, but if they will have their entire lives uprooted and be forced back to their home countries.
Disabled students who cannot work traditional jobs, students from regional areas paying high housing or transportation costs, queer students who cannot live with their queerphobic families, and other at-risk domestic students rely on their enrolment for Centrelink financial support. USyd has control not just over whether these students can study, but also whether or not they will face homelessness. USyd also has influence over whether students keep their degrees after graduation and whether they possess pathways to employment that will pay them a living wage.
When USyd wants to silence political dissent to course cuts, to the rapist residential colleges, to university investments in genocide – management leverages students’ financial and social dependence on the university to deter them from speaking up. USyd and other universities know the influence they wield over students’ lives and futures, and they abuse this power and collaborate with the police, the Border Force, and politicians to target, manipulate, and coerce students who challenge their profit-driven status quo.
Campus Access Policy
After forcing the Gaza Solidarity Encampment to shut down, USyd implemented the ‘Campus Access Policy’ (CAP) to further restrict the right to protest and legitimate dissent. USyd’s controversial policy was condemned by civil society organisations, including the Australian Democracy Network, the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, and USyd Law School. According to Amnesty International, the CAP ‘may breach human rights law.’
USyd alleged that Luna’s writing on whiteboards breached the CAP, among other policies. The CAP is a racist, sexist, and queerphobic rule used to police women, trans people, and international students. Leading USyd’s strategic direction in violence against LGBTQIA+ people and Palestine activists, University Administration tried to enforce the CAP to pressure an at-risk asylum seeker student to confess to misconduct and accept being silenced or be detained and deported to serious harm.
If detained in Australia, Luna would face denial of her hormones and inspection by transphobic male guards—human rights violations on the part of the Australian Government and Minister for Immigration, Tony Burke (Labor Party). In the custody of the Border Force, Luna would be misgendered and held alone or in the male compound of the immigration detention centre, and be subject to frisking, humiliation, isolation from other detainees, physical and sexual violence, as a consequence of a racist and Zionist University.
If deported to Malaysia because of USyd, Luna would be in danger of forced medical detransition and conversion therapy in re-education centres, which are openly promoted by the Malaysian Government. Luna would face harassment and arbitrary arrest and detention during raids for ‘cross-dressing’ and be charged with ‘indecent behaviour,’ in addition to violence, blackmail, verbal and physical abuse, assaults by police, and discrimination in accessing employment, healthcare, housing, and education. All at the hands of racist transphobes Mark Scott and Annamarie ‘hermeneutically suspicious’ Jagose.
Queers for Palestine
USyd has ties to Zionist companies in their private equity and venture capital funds, maintains exchange programs with Zionist universities such as Tel Aviv University, and holds investments in Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) listed companies, including Amazon, Disney, and [redacted].
Rather than repaying wages to casual staff, USyd pays tens of thousands to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for consultation on a business course. Rather than offer queer academics job security, Annamarie Jagose (‘feminist queer studies scholar and novelist,’ and Provost of wage theft from lesbians at the University) raises more money to invest for profit and fund Gaza genocide. Rather than use <0.5% of university profits to provide free pads and tampons in student bathrooms across campus, USyd management funnels as much $$$ as possible into war crimes and imperialism. Instead of offering all staff adequate gender affirmation leave or improving campus life for students, Scott and Jagose are in the business of Zionist settler colonialism, spending millions of dollars financing Palestinian land theft.
While occupation forces bomb neighbourhoods and then hold ‘the first ever pride flag raised in Gaza’ over the ruins – a blatant lie used to justify mass atrocities – USyd invites IDF war criminals to hold propaganda events on Mark Scott’s office floor. While the Zionist regime blackmails queer Palestinians into being informants with the threat of outing them, USyd calls the police on queer students protesting ties with genocide. While Israel cuts off aid and withholds access to HIV treatment within Gaza, USyd proposes policies to ban the flying of pride and Palestinian flags in campus buildings.
Support Luna, Scrap the CAP
Rallying behind Luna, a unity of supporters forced USyd to retreat from their suspension threat and grant Luna an extension to respond to the university’s threats until she had a bridging visa, shielding her from immediate deportation.
Seeking to subject a trans asylum seeker to imprisonment and torture, USyd and Mark Scott were condemned by trade unions, civil society groups, student representatives, the NSW Greens, queer and anti-racist activists. After journalist Alex McKinnon broke news of USyd’s misconduct against Luna, the SRC queer office held a joint press conference with the Queer Unionists in Tertiary Education (QUTE), Pride in Protest, Students for Palestine, and the NSW Greens. News spread like wildfire throughout domestic and international publications and newspapers, including the Star Observer, The Guardian, and the Malay Mail.
USyd scrambled to salvage their public image, claiming the suspension threat sent to Luna was an ‘administrative error’. No clerical error should be able to threaten a student visa holder, and USyd was eager to go ahead with suspension if not publicly called out on their misconduct. With soulless platitudes apologising for ‘any distress caused’, USyd repeatedly denied Luna the extension she asked for. USyd intentionally kept her in danger of detention and deportation for as long as possible, to scare her into admitting fault and agreeing to be silent on Palestine. Even if this ‘administrative error’ were real (it’s not), this would not make up for a misconduct notice that threatens a student’s life and no doubt makes it impossible to continue studying and living as normal.
The Queer Action Collective (QuAC) launched an open letter demanding Luna’s misconduct be withdrawn and the CAP be revoked, gathering over 1,300 total signatures. Local organisations and human rights groups called on the university to protect students’ right to protest and wellbeing. The student community continued to speak against the University’s threats to student safety at protests, denouncing USyd pinkwashing of Palestinian genocide, and delivering a physical copy of the open letter signatures to the management building. USyd emailed back, only to repeat their lie about an ‘administrative error’ and claim they had since reviewed their processes, a change that has only seen more students charged with breaching the CAP.
Over two weeks of pressure and public scrutiny from all sides, USyd was forced to delay their investigation and disciplining of Luna until after she received a bridging visa. With phone calls, statements, social media posts, SRC motions, news articles, Instagram DMs, rallies, speeches, and emails, university students, university staff, and the LGBTQIA+ community came together at record speed to expose USyd’s corruption and to stop an asylum seeker student from being detained and brutally deported to danger.
Despite this win, USyd remains eager to punish. USyd has not released how they are going to penalise Luna, and they have intimidated numerous students speaking about her case at on-campus rallies since. To destroy the anti-war movement, student organisations, and the Palestinian struggle for freedom, USyd will continue to weaponise the precarity of asylum seekers, trans people, and international students. To resist this repression, we all must be united in struggle, fighting for trans justice, refugee and migrant rights, and the liberation of Palestine. Until none of us are threatened with immigration detention or forced medical detransition, these bigoted and life-threatening policies will come for us all.
Drop the charges!
Free Luna!
Scrap the CAP!
Globalise the Intifada!
