The protest by Cambiare Rotta activists who asked the academic Senate of Sapienza University to boycott scientific collaboration with Israel ends with two students arrested and some officers injured. The mobilization began in the early hours of yesterday morning with the symbolic gesture of two students, Martina and Letizia, who chained themselves in front of the rector’s office. Then, in the afternoon, the student procession inside the university city, while the meeting of the Academic Senate was underway. The first tensions with the police flared up in front of the rector’s office, immediately after the publication of the official note in which Sapienza expressed “pain and horror for the military escalation in Palestine”, but refusing to boycott scientific collaboration with Israel . Shortly afterwards, a group of demonstrators tried to force the barriers placed by the officers in front of the entrance to the building, but the police dissolved the cordon allowing the students to continue the protest, which continued with chants and throwing smoke bombs.
School, no high school diploma for those with a 7 in conduct and failure for those who devastate the institutes. The opposition: «There is only repression»
THE TENSIONS
Then, in the late afternoon, tensions reignited when a student, Mohammed Jummah, a 27-year-old member of the Palestinian Arab Democratic Union, damaged a police car by jumping onto it in protest. The young man was arrested for damage and taken to the San Lorenzo police station. Two cars belonging to the university security staff were damaged by other demonstrators. The procession headed towards the police station, the officers tried to prevent them from reaching it and a manager was attacked, suffering a scratch on his neck. The person responsible for the gesture, Stella Boccitto, 29 years old, was arrested for resisting a public official. Around three hundred students showed solidarity with the activists by shouting “all free, all free!”, in Piazza del Verano and then moved in a procession through the streets of San Lorenzo. Once they returned to the police station, Digos, directed by Antonio Bocelli, informed the students that, as requested by them, the two arrested could spend the night under house arrest, awaiting this morning’s direct train. In fact, Mohammed suffers from a rare disease that requires specific therapy.
THE REACTIONS
«I spoke to Commissioner Belfiore to express my thanks to the police forces and my closeness to the officers injured following the unfortunate episodes at the Sapienza University, underlining how the actions of the officers prevented the demonstration from degenerating into more serious consequences”. The Prefect, Lamberto Giannini, said it. Also commenting was the Minister of University and Research, Anna Maria Bernini, who expressed closeness to the rector of the university, Antonella Polimeni. «What is happening is shameful. The Senate’s decision highlights that the academic community does not accept impositions from a minority that would like to isolate Italian universities from the international context. Research cannot be boycotted.” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also spoke: «Full condemnation for the violence that occurred. Devastation, attacks, clashes, attacks on a Rector’s office and a police station, with a manager punched. This is not demonstrating, but crime. My solidarity with the police director who was attacked, with all the police forces and the teachers.” “We ask for the suspension of the agreements with Israel, not their cancellation”, explained Laura Guazzone, professor of contemporary history of the Arab world, who together with 150 other professors signed the joint appeal of 2500 students, teachers and researchers to ask for the stop the agreements. The university, we read in a note from the university at the end of the session, “is committed to encouraging discussion, comparison and the free expression of dissent, as long as it does not become abuse”. In the document, the University also commits to «the implementation» «of further welcoming, support and solidarity actions for the academic communities involved in the conflict», and «allocates a portion of the budget for the financing of visits by scholars from the Middle East» . Commitments not considered sufficient for students in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
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