Microsoft has fired four employees who participated in a protest on company premises over the firm’s alleged links to Israel.
Anna Hattle and Riki Fameli received voicemails informing them that they were fired, the protest group No Azure for Apartheid said in a statement on Wednesday.
It added on Thursday that two more workers, Nisreen Jaradat and Julius Shan, were also sacked, Al Jazeera reported.
According to CBS News, the termination came after a group of seven people broke into executive offices at Microsoft’s global headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on Tuesday to hold a sit-in. No Azure for Apartheid, an advocacy group organized by Microsoft employees, said in an Instagram post that current and former workers from Microsoft, Google and Oracle were part of the group that occupied Smith’s office.
The protesters, who were arrested by police on Tuesday, were demanding that Microsoft cut ties with Israel after The Guardian reported earlier this month that a unit of the Israeli military is using Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to surveil Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.