A group of students blocked the prestigious French educational center Sciences Po Paris this Friday to call for a “clear condemnation of Israel’s actions” in Gaza, a protest in the wake of those held at American universities.
The renowned higher school of Political Sciences has been experiencing a blockade of its historic building in the center of the French capital since Thursday night, the entrance to which dawned blocked with construction material and rubbish bins.
On Friday morning it was possible to see through the windows that students spent the night there, dressed in kufiyas, and Palestinian flags hung in support of their struggle.
Sciences Po’s Palestine committee calls for “an explicit condemnation of Israel’s actions” in Gaza and an “end of collaboration” with all “institutions” considered complicit in the “systemic oppression of the Palestinian people”, it said.
The group is calling for an end to “the repression of pro-Palestinian voices on campus” after the elite center was accused of allowing anti-Semitism to flourish.
AFP was unable to contact the center’s management.
The new action comes as protests in defense of Palestinians are multiplying at universities in the United States, although they are not yet widespread in France.
The president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (Crif), Yonathan Arfi, considered the mobilization “dangerous”, although it does not occur “en masse”, he told the LCI channel.
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