Microsoft president Brad Smith says: 'Not ...' after company forced to host emergency conference as protesters 'storm building', lock employees out of the office

Microsoft

has temporarily locked down a building at its Redmond headquarters after protesters entered the office of company president Brad Smith. According to a report by The Verge, the protestors stormed Smith’s office and staged a sit-in, demanding the tech giant cut ties with the Israeli government. Both current and former Microsoft workers streamed the protest on Twitch, walking into Building 34 that houses top executives, and then into Smith’s office. The protests forced President

Brad Smith

to host an emergency conference where he informed reporters that the software giant is "working every day to get to the bottom of what’s going on".As per the report, the protestors unfurled banners and shouted “Brad Smith you can’t hide, you’re supporting genocide!”. Balloons with noisemakers were tied in the building’s entrance, with one such notice reading: “The People’s Court Summons Bradford Lee Smith on Charges of Crimes Against Humanity.”

Who were the protestors at Microsoft’s building

Abdo Mohamed, a

No Azure for Apartheid

organizer and former Microsoft worker, confirmed to The Verge that Microsoft employees Riki Fameli and Anna Hattle joined the sit-in, alongside former workers Vaniya Agrawal, Hossam Nasr, and Joe Lopez.

This protest comes less than a week after police arrested Hattle, Agrawal, Nasr, and Lopez during another demonstration at Microsoft headquarters. Redmond police claimed some protesters became aggressive during that earlier action.

How Microsoft responded to the protests

After the protest, Microsoft president Brad Smith hosted a press conference, where he addressed a group of reporters and viewers on a live stream. “Obviously, this was an unusual day,” he said, adding Microsoft is “committed to ensuring its human rights principles and contractual terms of service are upheld in the Middle East.”He further revealed that seven people in total were involved in the latest protests, with two of them being Microsoft employees. “When seven folks do as they did today, storm a building, occupy an office, lock other people out of the office, plant listening devices — even in crude form, in the form of telephones, cellphones hidden under couches and behind books — that’s not ok,” Smith said. “When they’re asked to leave and they refused, that’s not ok.”“We are working every day to get to the bottom of what’s going on, and we will,” Smith further added.

Previous protests against Microsoft

The group No Azure for Apartheid has been organizing repeated protests against Microsoft’s cloud contracts with the Israeli government. Earlier this year, activists disrupted Microsoft’s 50th anniversary event, where a former employee called AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman a “war profiteer.”