Austrian police arrested 16 students on Wednesday in front of the Technical University of Vienna during their sit-in in support of Palestine, while Belgian police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse a pro-Gaza demonstration in front of the Israeli embassy in Brussels.
Anatolia Agency reported that students at the Technical University of Vienna set up tents in the university’s garden to protest the Israeli attacks that have been ongoing for about 8 months on Gaza, before the Austrian police intervened to break up the student sit-in and arrested 16 students.
In turn, the Vienna Police issued a statement through its social media account, in which it said that a group of Palestine supporters organized a demonstration in front of the university without prior notice, and claimed that the demonstration had the potential to disturb public order, as well as interference due to the use of the slogan “Intifada,” which is banned in the country. The country.
This comes as an extension of the student university movement that began last April 18, in rejection of the Israeli war on Gaza, with a sit-in on the campus of Columbia University in New York, demanding its administration to stop its academic cooperation with Israeli universities and withdraw its investments from companies that support the occupation of Palestinian territories.
With the intervention of the police and the arrest of dozens of protesters, the protests expanded to other universities in countries such as France, Britain, Germany, Canada, India and Ireland, all of which witnessed demonstrations in support of their American counterparts, and demands to stop the Gaza war and boycott companies that supply weapons to Israel.
Brussels demonstration
In turn, Belgian police used water cannons and tear gas on Wednesday to disperse a demonstration in front of the Israeli embassy in Brussels, in which about 300 people participated in protest against the Israeli war on Gaza, according to what Agence France-Presse reported.
The demonstrators, wearing keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags, gathered in front of the embassy in Uccle, a municipality located in the south of the Brussels-Capital region, and chanted, “The occupation must go.”
Reports indicated that some of them threw garbage cans and projectiles at police officers who prevented access to the diplomatic headquarters, before security forces dispersed the gathering using water cannons and tear gas, the day after they dispersed a mass gathering in the same place in the same way, which sparked condemnations from Amnesty International and the League for Human Rights. .
Yesterday, Wednesday, Amnesty International called for an investigation into the process of dispersing the demonstration, and said that “the lack of a license is not a sufficient reason to put an end to the demonstration, let alone the use of force,” while the Human Rights League called on the authorities to “respect the right to peaceful demonstration and guarantee the right of citizens to Public expression of opinion.
This comes as the occupation army continues its incursion and intensifies its bombing of Rafah, ignoring a Security Council resolution to stop the fighting, and orders from the International Court of Justice to stop the attack on Rafah, as part of its war on Gaza since the seventh of last October, leaving tens of thousands of martyrs and wounded amid a humanitarian situation described as Disastrous.