The Minister of Higher Education Patrick Hetzel announced on Saturday that he would take legal action after the pro-Palestinian tags and demonstrations that occurred the day before against the arrival of Yaël Braun-Pivet at Lyon III University.
“To fight effectively against these unacceptable acts, I have just made a report to the public prosecutor of Lyon,” announced the minister on Republic,” he said.
The President of the National Assembly was targeted on Friday by hostile tags and slogans from pro-Palestinian activists opposed to her coming to Lyon III University.
“Yaël get out of there”, “genocidal perpetrators outside our universities”, “Free Gaza” or “Free Palestine”: several messages in large letters had been tagged during the night near the campus. Some were quickly deleted. Around 200 demonstrators continued in the same vein in the afternoon, before the arrival of the Macronist MP, chanting “criminal Israel, Yaël complicit” or “Yaël, get out of there, Lyon 3 is not You.
After the attack on October 7, the President of the National Assembly made a highly criticized visit to Tel Aviv alongside IDF soldiers.
The Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau denounced on X a “fascist drift of activists who exploit the tragedy experienced by the Palestinians”.
Patrick Hetzel, for his part, condemned on Friday “strongly the anti-Semitic insults uttered against Yaël Braun-Pivet and the unacceptable actions of groups of students that occurred at Lyon III”.
Yaël Braun-Pivet, who did not meet the demonstrators, spoke for a little over an hour with around 200 students.
