The police dislodged pro-Palestinian demonstrators who were blocking the Sciences Po Lyon site and the management decided to leave the school closed next week.
“The operation took place (…) calmly, without any person being injured. In view of the context, the administrative closure of the establishment is extended until May 12“, announced the management of the institute in a press release.
A few dozen demonstrators blocked an amphitheater yesterday afternoon, before spending the night there. At a meeting for LFI in Vénissieux (east of Lyon), Rima Hassan and Mathilde Panot visited them in the evening.
Friday morning, one of the school’s access doors was barricaded by trash cans, with a banner reading “Lyon stands with Gaza”, noted an AFP journalist.
Around 10:30 a.m., the police dislodged the demonstrators without incident at the request of management, according to the prefecture.
In its press release, the management explains that it offered the students who were blocking the amphitheater to make a room available to them to continue their debates. “on the sole condition of not occupying the premises during the night”.
Faced with their refusal, she said, “an evacuation of the premises by the police had to be organized in order to effectively guarantee the safety of people and property”.
“The goal was not to organize a blockade but an occupation of a single amphitheatre”, two students, aged 20 and 21, testified to AFP. The demonstrators wanted “have a space where we relay the words of the Palestinian people” and organize conferences. Other demands, “the strict boycott of Israeli universities for all universities in Lyon and a position taken by Sciences Po Lyon on the destruction of universities in Gaza”they reported.
In Saint-Etienne, the police also intervened this morning to evacuate around fifteen students who were blocking access to a university site, according to the presidency of the Jean-Monnet university.
This was the third police intervention since Tuesday, at the request of the president of the Saint-Etienne university, to unblock access to the building which houses the Department of Political and Territorial Studies, the branch of the IEP of Lyon, and the Saint-Etienne School of Economics. “These three interventions, carried out calmly, took place without any violence,” notes the presidency, adding that it has not observed any degradation on the part of the demonstrators.
In Paris, the police entered Sciences PO before noon, the epicenter in France of student mobilization in favor of Gaza. “The firmness is and will remain total”Matignon said at the same time.
