The conference on Palestine with Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Rima Hassan is canceled by the University of Lille

In a press release published Wednesday, the university believes that “the conditions are no longer met to guarantee the serenity of the debates”.

The conference on “Palestinian news” with the intervention of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Rima Hassan, Franco-Palestinian LFI candidate in the European elections, scheduled for Thursday April 18, is finally canceled by the University of Lille. In a press release, the university believes that “the conditions are no longer met to guarantee the serenity of the debates”, due to the tensions caused by this conference.

In the process, LFI announced that the conference will take place in Lille on Thursday but “in a new place”. “We will not be silent”, continues the press release. The party targeting “the presidency of the university which shows itself incapable of resisting the pressures which attack freedom of expression”. Wednesday evening, a new leaflet is circulating to announce the relocation of the event to the Impérial room on rue d’Arras, still in Lille, Thursday April 18 at 6:30 p.m. On the leaflet, it is also written: “No to censorship !” And “News in Palestine, Conference maintained!”

For his part, Jean-Luc Mélenchon expresses his “sadness to see in Lille a university claiming to be the victim of pressure and giving in to it by banning a conference a few hours before it takes place” and tackles in passing the different voices who have called for its ban. “It was enough for PS Jérôme Guedj to denounce the logo of the student association and for a Macronist MP to call for disorder to destroy academic freedom and its guarantors to go to bed without resistance.” The deputy from the North, David Guiraud, denounces him “a campaign led by provocative and violent groups”, and rebels against a “political censorship”.

Several political parties, Renaissance, the National Rally and the Republicans, were opposed to the holding of this conference, in particular for the logo affixed at the bottom of the poster: a map of Israel colored in red on a green background, where it is written “Free Palestine”.

The university is moving forward “worrying rise in international tensions in recent days”Who “reverberates nationally and locally, just as it does at the university.” She also sayst “regret the pressure exerted on the educational and scientific autonomy of higher education establishments”.

“A propaganda conference”

The Renaissance MP from the North, Violette Spillebout, had, for example, asked about “the cancellation of this propaganda conference” because, according to her, “it is not with those who represent the most violent anti-Semitism and the desire to destroy Israel that the debates will progress towards peace.” For his part, the president of the Hauts-de-France region, Xavier Bertrand, criticizes the poster’s logo: “We cannot tolerate, in a French university, such a conference by La France insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Rima Hassan who, through the ‘Free Palestine’ logo, deny the existence of the State of Israel “.