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UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH

University locks down after shooting false alarm

About 5,000 students and teachers at a Zurich university were told to lock themselves in their classrooms during a security alert on Thursday prompted by a false alarm of a shooting on campus.

Published: 4 December 2014 12:54 CET
University locks down after shooting false alarm
The Toni campus of the Zürcher Hochschule der Kunste (Zurich University of the Arts). Photo: ZHdK

Police deployed about 100 officers in riot gear to the Toni campus of Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), which includes rooms used by Zurich University of Applied Sciences, but concluded that there was no danger.
   
They were alerted to an incident at 8:45am, at the same time as an alarm went off on campus telling students to find a safe place to hide, a police statement said.
   
Le Matin newspaper said a student had contacted the paper to report rumours of a shooting.
   
"Stay in the rooms or search for a locked room. Lock the doors and windows," said the message relayed around the university in German and English, according to videos posted by students on social media.
   
"Look for the safe part of the room. Remain close to the floor and keep calm. Wait for further information."
   
Officers, many of them heavily armed, secured the building and went from room to room evacuating students, police and a witness said.
   
The alarm was finally lifted shortly before noon, according to police, which said there was no danger and students had been asked to leave the building.
   
Investigations are under way into what caused the alarm.

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ISLAM

Police probe opened after poster campaign against ‘Islamophobic’ lecturers at French university

The French government condemned on Monday a student protest campaign targeting two university professors accused of Islamophobia, saying it could put the lecturers in danger.

Published: 8 March 2021 13:35 CET
Police probe opened after poster campaign against 'Islamophobic' lecturers at French university
Illustration photo: Justin Tallis/AFP

Student groups plastered posters last week on the walls of a leading political science faculty in Grenoble that likened the professors to “fascists” and named them both in a campaign backed by the UNEF student union.

Junior interior minister Marlene Schiappa said the posters and social media comments recalled the online harassment of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty last October, who was beheaded in public after being denounced online for offending Muslims.

“These are really odious acts after what happened with the decapitation of Samuel Paty who was smeared in the same way on social networks,” she said on the BFM news channel. “We can’t put up with this type of thing.”

“When something is viewed as racist or discriminatory, there’s a hierarchy where you can report these types of issues, which will speak to the professor and take action if anything is proven,” Schiappa said.

Sciences Po university, which runs the Institute of Political Studies (IEP) in Grenoble in eastern France, also condemned the campaign on Monday and has filed a criminal complaint.

An investigation has been opened into slander and property damage after the posters saying “Fascists in our lecture halls. Islamophobia kills” were found on the walls of the faculty.

One of the professors is in charge of a course called “Islam and Muslims in contemporary France” while the other is a lecturer in German who has taught at the faculty for 25 years.

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