Atila Altuntas
15 June 2024•Update: 15 June 2024
STOCKHOLM
Police in Stockholm, detained 30 students Friday who were participating in a peaceful pro-Palestine demonstration at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH).
The demonstration, which saw students setting up tents on the KTH campus, was disrupted by police early in the day.
Despite warnings to vacate the area, the students, insisting on their right to peaceful assembly, were met with forceful police action.
The 30 students, who resisted by locking arms and hugging each other, were detained and taken to a police station.
The police's response has sparked further protests. A group of students, condemning the intervention, set up tents in front of parliament in a show of defiance and solidarity with their detained peers.
The protest at KTH is part of a larger movement that began at Columbia University in New York and has since spread to universities worldwide.
KTH students joined the global demonstrations on May 20, advocating for Palestinian rights and expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian group, Hamas, despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.
More than 37,200 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and over 84,900 others injured, according to local health authorities.
More than eight months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.
Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.
