“Contrary to what we have seen in other countries, especially on the other side of the Atlantic, no camp (…) has been established permanently,” the office of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal highlighted this Friday.
The deployment of security forces at the elite university
At that time, security forces were proceeding to evacuate the Sciences Po Paris campus located on rue Saint-Guillaume, in a wealthy neighborhood of the capital, where a hundred students had launched a new occupation on Thursday.
“A red line has been crossed”he assured Hicham, spokesman for the Palestine Committee that called the protest, in reference to the police entering the university campus, something unusual in France. The person in charge of the center, Jean Bassères, authorized the entry of the police given the failure of the “dialogue” to avoid the blockade and after the government asked the rectors to use all their “powers” to maintain “public order.”
A week after a tense demonstration on this campus and a first eviction, “91 people were evacuated without incident,” The Paris Police Prefecture reported this Friday.
The end of student protests over Gaza
But this situation is not the only one. The On Monday, educational authorities called for the eviction of the Sorbonne University, symbol of the May ’68 protests, and this Friday it was the turn of other campuses. The scope of the protests is so far limited. The agents evacuated universities in Lyon and Saint-Etienne, in the east of the country. AND most registered at Sciences Po Paris annex campuses in other cities, such as Poitiers or Reims.
“The student population has always shown sincere support for those who are being trampledrarely to authoritarians,” the honorary president of the French League of Human Rights, Henri Leclerc, assured France Inter radio.
The war between Israel and Palestine that keeps the whole world on alert
Leclerc compared the current protests against the Israeli offensive in Gaza, in response to the bloody attack by the Islamist movement Hamas on October 7, to the student actions in the 1960s against the Vietnam War. The cConflict in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians tends to tense the atmosphere in Francewhich welcomes the largest Jewish community in Europe. French authorities report an increase in anti-Semitic acts since October 7.
In this climate, sPro-Palestinian voices are often accused of complacency with Hamas and even anti-Semitism.partly due to the historical ambiguity on the part of the radical left that describes the Hamas attack as an act of “resistance.”
“These students are uneducated or anti-Semitic,” said on the BFMTV network French Minister of Fight against Discrimination, Aurore Bergéin reference to Sciences Po, where he studied, like President Emmanuel Macron. The student movements claim that they want to draw attention to the thousands of civilian deaths under the Israeli bombs in Gaza and, at Sciences Po, they ask that the university agreements with Israel be “investigated.”
“It is unacceptable that the main political science university in Europe and the second in the world be i“unable to take a position in accordance with international law on the current situation in Gaza”declared Sarah, one of the students.
Protests in the rest of the world over the Gaza offensive
Other universities also register an important mobilization in Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, Mexico and above all, USA, where the Police arrested about 2,000 people in New York, Los Angeles and other cities.
He President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, estimated on Thursday that “Prominent academic institutions” in the United States are “tainted by hatred and anti-Semitism fueled by arrogance and ignorance.” Numerous human rights defense organizations denounce that the argument of the fight against anti-Semitism be used to silence demonstrations that criticize the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza.
Source: Ambito
