AGI – Tension was very high today at the Sapienza University of Rome. The clashes between students, around 300, and the police were harsh, as is the outcome of a day of guerrilla warfare: two arrests, several injured, including some police officers, students contained and repelled with shields and truncheons by the police.
Students who demonstrated with the cry of “out of the war from the University”, on the day in which the Academic Senate discussed its position in the face of the war that has been inflaming the Middle East since 7 October (at the end of the day a document which underlines the pain of the escalation of the conflict, and reiterates the no to any form of boycott of scientific collaboration).
The procession started inside the university city but soon moved and expanded outside the Roman university, on Viale Regina Elena. It was there that the demonstration became heated and was blocked by the police. That’s where the clashes began. Pushes, some truncheons, moments of very high tension in the heart of the city. One of the participants jumped onto a state police vehicle, damaging it and was arrested for this.
Furthermore, the protesters also damaged two cars belonging to the university’s internal security staff outside the Rectorate. Subsequently, many protesters attempted to break into the university police station, but failed. On this occasion the demonstrators were confronted by the officers on duty and a police officer was attacked by a protester who was arrested. Other demonstrators headed towards the San Lorenzo police station where one of those arrested had been taken. In the end, two people were arrested.
They are a 29-year-old boy of foreign origins and a 27-year-old Italian girl, the two stopped by the police due to tensions during the pro-Palestine demonstration in the San Lorenzo district of Rome. The police station manager was injured by the 27-year-old.
The march also targeted the rector Antonella Polimeni, who according to the demonstrators had refused to take a position on the war in the Middle East. “My closeness to the Rector – commented the university minister, Anna Maria Bernini. – What is happening at La Sapienza University is shameful. Legitimate protest can never lead to violence and abuse. 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.”
The condemnations of the presidents of the Chamber and Senate, Fontana and La Russa and of some ministers were very harsh. “Full condemnation for the violence that occurred today by the collectives in Rome”, wrote Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in X. “Devastation, attacks, clashes, assaults on a Rector’s office and a police station, with a manager being punched. This is not demonstrating, but crime. My solidarity with the police manager who was attacked, with all the police forces and the teachers” .
“I heard from Police Commissioner Belfiore to express my thanks to the police forces and my closeness to the officers injured following the unfortunate episodes that occurred this afternoon at the Sapienza University of Rome, underlining how the work of the police forces prevented that the demonstration could degenerate with more serious consequences”, declared the Prefect of Rome, Lamberto Giannini. “Expressing one’s ideas is a constitutional right which contains within itself the concept of confrontation, which repudiates, by its very nature, any form of violence aimed at this”, added the Prefect.
According to Domenico Pianese, secretary of the Coisp police union, “the demonstrations organized by collectives and social centers have the sole purpose of fomenting and fueling clashes with the police forces; these characters who take to the streets and disguise themselves as demonstrators, they’re really just looking for a way to cause tension and create chaos.” A statement that arrived in the editorial offices in the evening and signed by some student representatives of the Communist Youth Front had a completely different tone: “We students have been mobilizing for months and we have received no other response other than repression from the university. Today we had called a strike to request a position from the university against the genocide in Palestine and the withdrawal of the military agreements stipulated by Sapienza with Israeli military companies and universities. The response we received was that of a Rector who only knows the truncheon as a method of managing dialogue with students”.
Violence is never acceptable, from any point of view and in any form – said Giovanna Iannantuoni, President of the CRUI – “It is even more inadmissible when it attempts to force a decision taken democratically by a governing body of a university. Universities Italians are and will always be the place for comparing ideas and culture. Rector Polimeni has all my solidarity.”
