Pro-Palestine protest at the University of Lausanne continues
Published: Friday, May 3rd 2024, 15:20
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In Lausanne, pro-Palestinian students continued their occupation of a university building on Friday. A dozen protesters spent the night on Friday in the Géopolis building of the University of Lausanne (UNIL).
"Everything is calm," university spokeswoman Géraldine Falbriard told the Keystone-SDA news agency on Friday morning. She reiterated that UNIL would take a position on the students' demands "in the next few days". On Thursday evening, around 50 people occupied the Géopolis building.
In particular, these students called for "an academic boycott of Israeli institutions and an immediate ceasefire in the Palestinian territories". They pledged to carry out their action in a peaceful manner, without disrupting lectures and research activities. UNIL, for its part, promised not to impose any academic sanctions on the protesters.
On Thursday evening, the students were able to talk to Rector Frédéric Herman on site. On Friday, Herman confirmed on RTS television that he wanted to maintain the dialog.
"They have sent us demands and we are taking note of them. We will position ourselves in the coming days," he said. However, universities are not called upon to position themselves politically. "They are educational institutions," emphasized the rector.
The war in the Gaza Strip is also causing unrest at the University of Lausanne's neighbor, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). The feminist association Polyquity is threatened with suspension. The reason for this is a conference on "decolonial feminism" in connection with Palestine, which took place last Tuesday.
EPFL justified its threat by stating that, contrary to what the organizers had announced, the conference was clearly partisan in nature. In a tense international context, the university was obliged to do everything possible to avoid escalation.
©Keystone/SDA
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