Dutch riot police broke up a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) on Wednesday, battling demonstrators who had vowed to stay put until the institution severed all ties with Israel.
Protesters on barricades made of desks, fences, wooden pallets and bricks used fire extinguishers to keep the police at bay, images on the local TV station AT5 showed.
Police hit protesters with batons and used a shovel to knock down the barricades, breaking through in a matter of minutes.
Hundreds of protesters on the narrow streets outside shouted “Shame on you!” as the police pushed them away from the campus site and dragged many protesters away.
The police had detained 169 people early on Tuesday after sometimes violent clashes as they cleared a similar protest at another UvA site.
Students in the Dutch capital have joined a wave of sit-ins and other actions at universities throughout Europe against Israel’s war in Gaza, following larger-scale disturbances at U.S. universities.
Advertisement • Scroll to continue UvA managers had hoped talks on Wednesday would bring an end to the protests, but the students dug in, pulling up bricks from the streets and pave-ments near to the 19th-century campus and forming human chains to take them to the barricade.
The protesters say the Israeli institutions that the university works with profit from oppression of Palestinians. Campus protests by pro-Palestinian activists spread across Europe on Tuesday as some called for a break in academic ties with Israel over the war in Gaza, while schools increasingly faced the question under debate in the U.S.: Allow or intervene?
German police broke up a protest by several hundred pro-Palestinian activists who had occupied a courtyard at Berlin’s Free University. Protesters occupied a university building in Amsterdam hours after police detained 169 people at a different campus location. Two remained in custody on suspicion of committing public violence.
Elsewhere in Europe, some student camps have been allowed to stay in places like the lawns of Cambridge. In recent days, students have held protests or set up encampments in Finland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, France and Britain.
In Berlin, protesters put up about 20 tents and formed a human chain around them. Most covered their faces with medical masks and draped keffiyeh scarves around their heads, shouting slogans such as “Viva, viva Palestina.”
Organizers said the protests were made up of students from various Berlin universities and other individuals.
Police were seen carrying some people away and using pepper spray as scuffles erupted between officers and protesters. The school’s administrators said in a statement they had called the police after protesters had rejected any kind of dialogue and some had attempted to occupy lecture halls.
“An occupation is not acceptable on the FU Berlin campus,” university president Guenter Ziegler said. “We are available for academic dialogue — but not in this way.”—Agencies
