(7 May 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rome, Italy – 7 May 2024
1. Tent camp at Rome’s La Sapienza University
2. Students setting up tent
3. Tent with Palestinian flag in the background
4. Coffee pot on table
5. Students and tents
6. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Ludovica Leonardi, student, Cambiare Rotta (Change Route in Italian) activist:
"La Sapienza, especially the dean, is currently observing a media blackout and once again has not provided us with a response. Despite our presence in the tents, despite hunger strikes, chaining ourselves, and setting up the tents again today, we still haven’t received a response. However, I think the involvement of all faculties and therefore also the departments is indicating that a large part of the academic community actually wants to listen to and participate in the students’ reasons.”
7. Tents’ information point, sign reading (Italian): "Info-point, how can I help? Do you want to participate? Do you need assistance? Who we are, what do we do?"
8. Student organising the inside of a tent
9. Personal belongings in front of a tent
10. Banner with words reading (Italian): "Tents against genocide, Sapienza for Palestine"
11. Student holding a phone
12. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Dario Caglioti, student:
"We have been reported to the police more than 30 times for the occupation of the rector’s office and for the protests we have carried out in the following days. It does concern us, yes, because we are witnessing an increasingly advanced criminalisation of dissent, where now any act of protest is turned into a public order issue."
13. Various of the camp
14. Tent with a banner behind, reading (Italian): "Sapienza for Palestine, stop agreements with Israel and the arms industry"
15. Sign reading (English): "All eyes on Rafah"
16. Sign reading (Italian): "Break agreements with Israel, war industry, Nato"
17. Students talking, standing in between the tents
STORYLINE:
A few dozens pro-Palestinian student protesters set up approximately 10 tents in a small park inside of Rome’s main university on Monday evening.
Students at Rome’s La Sapienza university built a small tent village to protest against the Israeli government and the offensive in the Gaza Strip.
The conflict that started Oct. 7 when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking roughly 250 hostages.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.
Israeli strikes have devastated the enclave and displaced most of its inhabitants.
The Italian student protesters are also asking for the boycott of academic agreements with Israeli universities, especially if research cooperation is related to dual use – civil and military – technologies.
Rome students, under the umbrella of the Change Route pro-Palestinian movement have been asking La Sapienza’s rector for a new meeting about their requests to stop any academic cooperation with Israeli universities.
The rector, Antonella Polimeni, had received the student protesters in April, but the university did not take any concrete political step towards Israeli academic institutions.
"We have been reported to the police more than 30 times for the occupation of the rector’s office and for the protests we have carried out in the following days," said Dario Caglioti, one of the students.
Italian students have also set up tents in the universities of Bologna, Rome and Naples.
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