The lecture of Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský at London University UCL was interrupted by pro-Palestinian student protesters on Friday afternoon. After about 20 minutes of continuous noise, the minister left the hall. In response, Lipavský said that he left the university based on the recommendations of the security forces. He was ready to finish the lecture.
In the first part of the one-hour program at the university, the head of the Czech diplomacy was to give a roughly fifteen-minute speech on the topic of Czech foreign policy and the role of collective memory. At the end of the speech, in which he began to address the Russian invasion of Ukraine, several students stood up, began to shout at the minister that he was a war criminal and shouted slogans such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” plague, Palestine will be free) or that Israel is a terrorist state. According to them, the Czech Republic is participating in genocide.
The minister waited for about two dozen minutes to see if the situation would calm down. Based on the recommendations of the security forces, he subsequently left the hall through the emergency exit, as other activists blocked the access corridors. For example, the head of diplomacy could not go to another lecture room.
“Based on the recommendations of the security forces, we left the university. I was ready to finish the lecture and answer the questions in the discussion,” said Lipavský after leaving.
The minister subsequently stated on the X network that it is not only about him, but in such a situation it is about the safety of the entire delegation that arrived with him. He repeated that he was ready to finish the lecture and answer questions from the audience. “A few loud individuals decided not to allow the rest of the auditorium to debate,” he added.
According to the program at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at UCL, after the introductory quarter-hour speech, there was another 15-minute discussion with political scientist Sean Hanley. Subsequently, Lipavský had to debate with the students for half an hour. The discussion was moderated by political scientist Jessie Barton-Hronešová. Some participants tried to calm down the protesters, the situation also led to minor verbal exchanges.
The war in the Palestinian Gaza Strip was sparked last October by a terrorist attack by Hamas and its allies on southern Israel, during which militants killed 1,200 people and took 251 others to Gaza as hostages. According to Israel, 97 people remain in captivity, of which 34 have been declared dead by the army. Since the only ceasefire, which lasted only a week at the end of last November and released more than 100 hostages, all other attempts at an agreement brokered by the US, Egypt and Qatar have failed. Last week, there were media reports that Qatar was ending its role as a mediator until Israel and Hamas showed a “sincere willingness to return to the negotiating table.”
At least 43,764 Palestinians have been killed and another 103,490 injured in Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in the Gaza Strip since last October, according to figures from the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry on Friday. The data does not distinguish between Hamas fighters and civilians, of whom they are the majority. Another thousands of bodies apparently remain under the rubble of collapsed buildings.
Source: spravy.pravda.sk
