Pro-Palestinian protests grow despite police crackdowns
Despite a police crackdown on student protests in support of Palestine, demonstrations continue across the United States and in other places across the world. In many universities across the US, pro-Palestinian rallies, sit-ins and police clampdowns on them have upended the final days of the school year.
More than 2,400 protesters have been arrested on campuses across the US to quell the largest student protests since the anti-Vietnam war protests in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Some universities have been forced to cancel their graduation ceremonies, while others have seen entire buildings occupied by protesting students.
Across the Atlantic, police entered France’s prestigious Sciences Po university in Paris on Friday and removed student activists who had occupied its buildings overnight in protest against Israel’s war on Gaza.
In Berlin, German police broke up a pro-Palestinian demonstration at Humboldt University in central Berlin on the same day, arresting several protesters.
Pro-Palestinian protests have also spread across British universities as tent camps grow at universities in London, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield, Leeds, Warwick, Swansea and Bristol, according to local media.
Read and watch our content on the pro-Palestine university protests:
- Police remove pro-Palestinian students from Paris’s Sciences Po university
- In Texas, pro-Palestine university protesters clash with state leaders
- How do American universities make their money?
- How students around the world are taking a stand for Gaza
- Inside Story: Is the crackdown on US university campuses a threat to free speech?
- How a Gaza protest at Indiana University became a battle for free speech
- Palestinians in Rafah express thanks to US university protesters
- ‘Divest from Israel’: Decoding the Gaza protest call shaking US campuses
Demonstrators in Berlin show support for Palestinians
Students in Ireland join Gaza protest wave
In Dublin, students at Trinity College built an encampment on Friday that forced the university to restrict campus access today and close the Book of Kells exhibition, one of Ireland’s top tourist attractions.
The camp was set up after the student union said it had been fined 214,000 euros ($230,500) by the university for losses caused by protests in recent months, not exclusively over Gaza.
The protesters were demanding that Trinity cut academic ties with Israel and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Student union President Laszlo Molnarfia posted a photograph of benches piled up at the entrance to the building housing the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript created by Celtic monks in about 800 AD.
Trinity College said it had restricted access to students, staff and residents to ensure safety, and that the exhibition would be closed on Saturday.
People attend a protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, outside Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, November 18, 2023
Students in Switzerland join Gaza protests
About 100 students occupied a building at Lausanne University in a move to protest the war in Gaza, demanding an end to scientific cooperation with Israel.
“Palestinians have been dying for over 200 days, but we’re not being heard,” one protester told Swiss television. “Now there’s a global movement to get governments to take action, but it’s not happening. That’s why we want to get universities involved now.”
The university said the occupation could continue until Monday provided it did not disrupt work on campus. “We universities are not called upon to take political stands,” the rector Frederic Herman told RTS radio.
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