Police clashed with pro-Palestinian protesters in the Dutch capital yesterday, a day after riot police violently broke up an encampment at Amsterdam University.
Police officers were seen using batons against protesters to prevent them from marching past the nearby Holocaust Monument on their way to the Amsterdam city centre.
Amsterdam police posted on social media platform X that riot police had closed off part of a major road in the centre for security reasons.
Earlier a crowd of several hundred had gathered, chanting slogans against the war in Gaza and denouncing Israel’s ongoing military operations.
‘Free, Free Palestine!’, protesters shouted. ‘The people united will never be defeated.’
Police used a bulldozer to knock down barricades early in the day and detained 169 people in sometimes violent clashes, statements and videos of the protest showed.
“Students and staff describe the use of pepper spray, police batons, police dogs and bulldozers to forcefully remove them. People were injured because of this excessive violence,” a group calling itself Dutch Scholars for Palestine said in a statement.
“We firmly and unequivocally insist upon the rights of students and scholars to engage in protest. We deplore the University of Amsterdam administration’s reliance on using violence instead of engaging in the students’ justified demands.”
The university said in a statement that an initially peaceful student protest which began on Monday afternoon had turned hostile, with beatings, throwing of fireworks and the burning of an Israeli flag.
German police, meanwhile, cleared a pro-Palestinian protest camp at a courtyard of the Freie Universitaet Berlin, which had called for a stop to Israel’s military operation in Gaza.
More than 100 people set up two dozen tents on the campus yesterday, joining a call by the so-called ‘Student Coalition Berlin’ to occupy German universities.
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