After occupying the country’s universities and high schools, nearly a thousand pro-Palestinian students and sympathizers took to the streets on Saturday afternoon in Lausanne. Their demand is always the same: an academic boycott of Israeli universities.
The demonstration began around 3:00 p.m. on the Place de la Riponne to the sound of “Viva, viva Palestina”, chanted by an activist and echoed by some 800 participants, according to a count by Keystone-ATS. Students from the University of Lausanne, EPFL and other French-speaking universities took turns speaking.
Between the busy halls of universities and the streets of Lausanne, their demands have not changed. They still demand an “immediate halt to all ongoing academic collaborations” between Swiss and Israeli institutions. The students also denounced the pressure and intimidation from their respective rectorates, stressing that “this is the struggle, the solution”.
Equipped with Palestinian flags, draped in keffiyehs, the activists – 1,500 according to the organizers, 700 according to the police – then marched through the city center. “Palestinians lives matter”, “In Palestine, it is humanity that is being assassinated”, “Criminal Israel, united accomplices”, we could read on signs.
Lausanne rather than Bern
The activists punctuated their journey with slogans such as “Free free Palestine”, “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free”. They also invited passers-by to “join” them rather than “stare” at them.
The demonstration took place “peacefully and in a good-natured atmosphere”, according to a spokesperson for the Lausanne police. Nationally, it should have taken place in Bern, but the student coordination for Palestine indicated that it had not received authorization in the capital. She then turned to Lausanne, where the gathering was authorized.
International movement
Having left American campuses in mid-April, the student movement against the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip arrived in Switzerland on May 2 with a first occupation at the University of Lausanne. It then spread throughout the country, to the universities of Geneva, Fribourg, Neuchâtel, Bern and Basel, as well as several other higher education institutions.
These occupations, now almost all completed, caused tensions and, in places, the police had to intervene to evict the students.
This article was automatically published. Source: ats
