Follow-aware
Canadian police forcefully dismantled a pro-Palestinian camp at the University of Alberta in the city of Edmonton (Alberta, west) and arrested three people, two days after they evacuated in the same way a similar student sit-in in the city of Calgary, located in the same province.
Since Thursday, students have been staging a sit-in on the university campus to protest the war in the Gaza Strip and to demand that their university disclose its investments and sever all ties with the Zionist entity.
On Saturday, the police, at the request of the university president, evacuated the protesters, who numbered nearly a hundred.
University President Bill Flanagan said in a statement that “the security of the university community is at risk” and that all methods of dialogue had failed, noting that “the vast majority” of the demonstrators left the scene peacefully after several warnings.
For its part, the police said that about fifty people resisted and that three from outside the institution were arrested, but no injuries were reported.
For its part, the Peebles University of Palestine student group reported that four students were injured, one of whom required hospitalization.
The student group denounced the police’s use of “gas bombs and pepper spray” as well as “batons and bicycles to physically attack demonstrators,” based on videos posted on the Internet.
For his part, a police spokesman acknowledged the use of “special ammunition” but not tear gas.
This operation comes days after the police dismantled a similar protest camp in Calgary, the largest city in Alberta.
On Thursday, clashes broke out, during which police used tear gas and sound bombs to evacuate protesters on the University of Calgary campus. During that operation, the police arrested five people.
In other places in Canada, similar camps were established in a number of universities, such as McGill University in Montreal, whose administration decided to begin on Monday the necessary procedures for the police to dismantle this protest camp.
Similar to pro-Palestinian initiatives at many American universities, hundreds of people have been camping for two weeks in the heart of the famous McGill University.
Source: afp
2024-05-13 05:53:19