A pro-Palestinian encampment was dismantled at Laval University on Saturday evening, reported the Service de police de la Ville de Québec (SPVQ).
Police officers went to the grounds, near Sainte-Foy Road and Séminaire Avenue, where a demonstration involving around 30 people was taking place, according to the SPVQ.
“The police were able to observe that the various groups of demonstrators had begun to set up several encampments,” the SPVQ said in a news release.
“In accordance with article 19.1 of municipal by-law 1091, police officers spoke to the protesters and explained the regulations. They therefore decided to dismantle their camps themselves. However, the group was able to continue demonstrating as stipulated in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” added the SPVQ in the same document.
Three statements of offence were issued to protesters, according to the SPVQ.
“In order to prevent a recurrence, one of the protesters was transported to the detention centre,” police said.
Police officers carried out surveillance during the night to prevent the installation of new encampments on the university grounds.
“We saw it as a way of not letting us exercise our right to demonstrate on campus, even though we were doing so totally peacefully, against a genocide taking place on the other side of the ocean,” said Antoine Grenier, co-spokesperson of the Laval University students for Palestine movement, in an interview on Sunday.
“They gave us 10 minutes to pick up our things, otherwise the 40 police officers who were there were going to enter the camp and do it by force. So yes, we made the decision to pull our tents down, and to continue demonstrating without tents on campus for the rest of the day,” he said.
Grenier said the students continued to protest until around 11 p.m. on Saturday night.
The student group’s demands include “complete financial transparency from the university regarding its Israel-related investments and partnerships”, “positioning in favour of a ceasefire and condemnation of the Israeli state’s genocide of the Palestinian people”, and a “promise to completely divest from investments in companies complicit in genocide”.
“We’ll certainly be looking into what happened with the municipal by-law, because the lawyers we had told us that we had the right to exercise our right to demonstrate,” said Grenier. “As it happens, the university movement is the last place we have to denounce what’s going on right now in Gaza, especially in relation to the lack of action by our government.
“We think it’s a real shame that we weren’t given the opportunity to exercise our right to demonstrate, when everywhere in the universities, throughout North America, in England and elsewhere, it’s a movement that’s fairly global, and not intended to be violent.”
This week, the activist group “Université populaire Al-Aqsa de l’UQAM” announced that it intends to lift its encampment no later than June 6, having been satisfied with a resolution passed Wednesday by the board of directors of the Université du Québec à Montréal.
A pro-Palestinian encampment is still in place on the McGill University campus in Montreal. In a message published on May 29 on the university’s website, Rector Deep Saini stated that he had not yet reached “common ground” with the camp’s participants.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on June 2, 2024.