Students from many countries join protests on Gaza – DW – 05/03/2024

Like the United States, several countries began to report this Thursday (02.053.2024) increasing student protests in several universities against the war in the Gaza Strip, including the establishment of camps.

Students of British universities set up camps

Several British universities have begun setting up pro-Palestinian camps to reject the war in the Gaza Strip, but according to the call, the organized groups do not expect a repeat of the violence seen in US protests. Palestine Solidarity Campaign,

According to organizing groups, the first student camp was set up at the University of Warwick in the last week of April, and later at campuses in Bristol, Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle.

The campaign manager of the aforementioned group, Stella Swain, announced to the media this Thursday that, in the coming weeks, “more places will take up this call for support. All protests so far have been completely peaceful and this indicates There’s nothing to give they ain’t they’ll be. There would be very little reason for a (police) response.” He said he hoped that any political leadership – whether they supported his cause or not – would not want to see British police behave the way American police have treated student protesters. Have done with.

They occupy a lobby at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland

Meanwhile, about forty people occupied the lobby of the Faculty of Human and Political Sciences of Switzerland’s most prestigious University of Lausanne (UNIL) on Thursday afternoon, public television channel RTS reported.

The protest took place in the main lobby of the building, where groups of protesters marched with Palestinian flags and scarves, chanting slogans such as “Free Palestine”.

The people are demanding an academic boycott of Israel’s institutions as well as an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the restoration of Swiss funding to the United Nations Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA) and “an end to the repression against the solidarity movement with Palestine”. According to the source.

University of Valencia students go camping

For their part, students from the University of Valencia are organizing the first camp of its kind in Spain to show solidarity with Palestine and that it will continue indefinitely as long as they have the “strength” and until they achieve their goal. Don’t: “Achieve an End to the Palestinian Genocide”.

This was said by political science student and member Esther Monge this Thursday. students for palestine and Pace Valencia’s Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, where the initiative originated, which also demands an end to agreements between universities and institutions with any company or organization in Israel. Similarly, the camp, which started on 29 April at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Valencia, demands a statement from universities that goes beyond analogies, characterizing what happened “not as a conflict or a war but as a genocide”. .

For its part, the University of Valencia – which left the facilities of the Faculty of Philosophy on the first day of the camp due to rain – assured that it has no intention of asking the camping groups to leave them. In fact, it will strengthen security with more security guards, as well as install portable urinals for people camping, the agency was informed. efe University sources.

in France, science po will be closed due to protest

science poAccording to local media, one of the most prestigious university centers in France, announced this Thursday that it will close its campus on May 3 due to the pro-Palestinian protests of some of its students.

“We invite you to telework,” the university said in a message to its employees. science poWith other universities in France – some of them symbolic, such as Sorbonne– has been one of the centers of mobilization and blockade by student groups that condemn the “Palestinian genocide” allegedly carried out by Israel.

Inspired by the mobilization of some American universities, many of these protests, which have so far been peaceful, have been intervened by riot police.

Students begin camping at the University of Toronto

At the same time, about 150 students of the University of Toronto in Canada set up a camp on the campus this Thursday morning. The group, which has set up fifty tents, demands that the University of Toronto – one of the most important in North America – cancel its investment in Israel.

Like the United States, students at several Canadian universities have protested over the situation in the Gaza Strip. On May 1, a judge in the province of Quebec refused to order the removal of a student camp set up at Montreal’s McGill University, which had been established there six days earlier.

Canadian police had to intervene this Thursday when pro-Israel protesters tried to confront students staying at a camp at McGill University.

AMA (EFE, Reuters, AFP, BBC, RTS, ABC)