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PROTESTS

Police clear pro-Gaza sit-in at top Paris university

Police on Friday entered the Sciences Po university in Paris to remove dozens of students staging a pro-Gaza sit-in in the entrance hall, AFP journalists saw, as protests fired political debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Published: 4 May 2024 11:56 CEST
Police clear pro-Gaza sit-in at top Paris university
Protesters, supporters and journalists are surrounded by French gendarmes after the evacuation of a pro-Gaza sit-in at Sciences Po. Photo: Miguel MEDINA/AFP.

Demonstrations have struck education institutions in several French cities in recent weeks, echoing the mass Gaza protests that have led to clashes in US universities.

One protester at elite school Sciences Po, who identified himself as a representative of the students’ Palestine Committee named Hicham, said university authorities had given the group 20 minutes to leave before the forcible evacuation because of “exams to be held from Monday”.

The Paris police headquarters said that “91 people were removed without incident,” while Prime Minister Gabriel Attal’s office said such protests would be dealt with using “total rigour”.

Sciences Po interim administrator Jean Basseres said he was “conscious of the significance of this difficult decision and the emotion it could spark”, adding that “multiple attempts at dialogue did not allow us to avoid it”.

The university closed its main buildings on Friday in response to the sit-in and called for remote classes instead.

After the evacuation, around 300 people demonstrated on the Pantheon square around 1.5 kilometres (just under one mile) from the university in response to a call from student unions.

“I’m very moved by what’s going on in Palestine,” said Mathis, 18, a music student at the nearby Sorbonne university who asked not to give his surname.

Eric Coquerel, a senior lawmaker for the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party, said the “the government must accept young people mobilising”.

“Instead, they often criminalise, caricature or slander them,” he said.

‘Disappointing’

Sciences Po, widely considered France’s top political science school, with alumni including President Emmanuel Macron, has seen student action at its sites across the country in protest against the war in Gaza and the ensuing humanitarian crisis.

Protests have been slow to spread to other prominent universities, unlike in the United States — where demonstrations at around 40 facilities have at times spiralled into clashes with police and mass arrests.

Demonstrations have so far been more peaceful in France, home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel and the United States and to Europe’s largest Muslim community.

The University of California, Los Angeles, announced that Friday’s classes would be held remotely after police cleared a protest camp there and arrested more than 200 people.

Sciences Po administration took the same step for its Paris student body of between 5,000 and 6,000.

Protesters had occupied the entrance hall in a “peaceful sit-in” following a debate on the conflict with administrators on Thursday morning that their Palestine Committee dubbed “disappointing”.

Administrator Basseres refused student demands to “investigate” Science Po’s ties with Israeli institutions.

Protests in major cities 

The latest war in Gaza began after Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack on Israel on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel estimates that 129 hostages seized by militants during their attack remain in Gaza. The Israeli military says it believes 34 of them are dead.

Israel’s relentless retaliatory offensive on Gaza has killed at least 34,622 people in the Palestinian territory, mostly women and children, according to the besieged enclave’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Outside the Sorbonne University, a few hundred metres (yards) from Sciences Po in central Paris, members of the Union of Jewish Students in France (UEJF) set up a “dialogue table” on Friday.

“Jewish students have their place in this dialogue,” said Joann Sfar, a comic-book artist invited as a guest speaker.

“I understand why students outraged by what’s going on in the Middle East are radical” but “I’m reassured as soon as I see ‘human’ dialogue,” he added.

Sciences Po sites in the French cities of Le Havre, Dijon, Reims and Poitiers have all seen disruption, blockades or occupations.

Police also removed students from the Institute for Political Studies (IEP) in Lyon.

Around 100 students had occupied a lecture hall at Science Po’s branch in the southeastern city late on Thursday.

Law enforcement on Friday removed a dozen students who were blocking the entrance to a university site in nearby Saint-Etienne.

And in the northeastern city of Lille, police broke up a student blockade of the ESJ journalism school and deployed outside the nearby Sciences Po building, allowing exams to go ahead, an AFP reporter saw.

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PROTESTS

Two dead and hundreds hurt in New Caledonia unrest: France

Two people have been killed and hundreds more injured, shops were looted and public buildings torched during a second night of rioting in New Caledonia, as anger over constitutional reforms from Paris boiled over.

Published: 15 May 2024 09:00 CEST
Two dead and hundreds hurt in New Caledonia unrest: France

What began as pro-independence demonstrations has spiralled into three days of the worst violence seen on the French Pacific archipelago since the 1980s.

Despite heavily armed security forces fanning out across the capital Noumea, and the ordering of a nighttime curfew, rioting continued overnight virtually unabated.

Hundreds of people including “around 100” police and gendarmes have been injured in the unrest, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said in Paris.

One person had been shot dead overnight but authorities were yet to establish the circumstances that led to the incident, Darmanin said, adding that dozens of homes and businesses had been torched.

The office of the High Commissioner, France’s top representative in New Caledonia, later Wednesday reported a second death in the riots, without giving any details of the circumstances.

President Emmanual Macron cancelled a planned domestic trip and moved Wednesday’s regular cabinet meeting to hold a crisis meeting with key ministers on New Caledonia, his office said.

In Noumea and the commune of Paita there were reports of several exchanges of fire between civil defence groups and rioters.

Streets in the capital were pocked by the shells of burned-out cars and buildings, including a sports store and a large concrete climbing wall.

“Numerous arsons and pillaging of shops, infrastructure and public buildings – including primary and secondary schools – were carried out,” said the High Commission.

Security forces had managed to regain control of Noumea’s prison, which holds about 50 inmates, after an uprising and escape attempt by prisoners, it said in a statement.

Police have arrested more than 130 people since the riots broke out Monday night, with dozens placed in detention to face court hearings, the commission said.

A night-time curfew was extended, along with bans on gatherings, the carrying of weapons and the sale of alcohol.

La Tontouta International Airport remained closed to commercial flights.

As rioters took to the streets, France’s lower house of parliament 17,000 kilometres (10,600 miles) away voted in favour of a constitutional change bitterly opposed by indigenous Kanaks.

The reform – which must still be approved by a joint sitting of both houses of the French parliament – would give a vote to people who have lived in New Caledonia for 10 years.

Pro-independence forces say it would dilute the share of the vote held by Kanaks, the Indigenous group that makes up about 41 percent of the population and the major force in the pro-independence movement.

Macron urged calm in a letter to the territory’s representatives, calling on them to “unambiguously condemn” the “disgraceful and unacceptable” violence.

Macron said French lawmakers would vote to definitively adopt the constitutional change by the end of June unless New Caledonia’s opposing sides agree on a new text that “takes into account the progress made and everyone’s aspirations”.

The French leader has been seeking to reassert his country’s importance in the Pacific region, where China and the United States are vying for influence.

Lying between Australia and Fiji, New Caledonia is one of several French territories spanning the globe from the Caribbean and Indian Ocean to the Pacific in the post-colonial era.

In the Noumea Accord of 1998, France vowed to gradually give more political power to the Pacific island territory of nearly 300,000 people.

As part of the agreement, New Caledonia has held three referendums over its ties with France, all rejecting independence.

But the independence movement retains support, particularly among the Indigenous Kanak people.

The Noumea Accord has also meant that New Caledonia’s voter lists have not been updated since 1998 – depriving island residents who arrived from mainland France or elsewhere since then of a vote in provincial polls.

A New Caledonia pro-independence leader, Daniel Goa, asked people to “go home”, and condemned the looting.

But “the unrest of the last 24 hours reveals the determination of our young people to no longer let France take control of them,” he added.

The main figure of the anti-independence camp, former minister Sonia Backes, denounced what she described as anti-white racism of demonstrators who burned down the house of her father, a man in his 70s who was evacuated by the security forces.

“If he was not attacked because he was my father, he was at least attacked because he was white,” she told France’s BFM TV.

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