Pro-Palestine student protests spread to universities of Fribourg, Basel in Switzerland

By Beyza Binnur Donmez

GENEVA (AA) - Dozens of students from Switzerland's Fribourg and Basel universities joined protests in solidarity with Palestine on Monday.

Occupying the Perolles 21 building in Fribourg and the Bernouillanum building in Basel, students called for the suspension of all collaborations with Israeli institutions.

The student protests originated with a movement at the University of Lausanne before spreading to the polytechnic schools of Lausanne and Zurich, as well as the University of Geneva.

In Fribourg, students demanded an academic boycott of Israeli institutions and an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Palestine. They also installed banners that read: "Stop the genocide, solidarity with Palestine."

Meanwhile, in Basel, students urged the university to "assume its responsibilities" by halting collaborations with Israeli institutions.

More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 76,600 others injured in a brutal Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip since an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7 last year that killed nearly 1,200 people.

Over seven months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

In an interim ruling in January, The Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) said it is "plausible" that Tel Aviv is committing genocide in Gaza, ordering it to stop such acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in the enclave.

South Africa on Friday asked the ICJ to order Israel to withdraw from the southern Gaza city of Rafah as part of additional emergency measures over the war.