WHAT HAPPENED?
In May 2024, students and staff at ETH Zurich gathered twice to protest against ETH’s collaboration with Israel’s colonialist project of displacement targeting Palestinians, as well as against the escalating brutality, which has reached the level of genocide.
Around 100 people gathered in the ETH main building on the two days of the sit-ins, which led to several criminal complaints, summary penalty orders and court cases.
The students and staff demanded a meeting with the ETH management. The ETH management refused this request. Instead, the students were subjected to initial threats, after which a police operation began.
The police closed off the Polyterrasse and took photographs and video footage.
When the demonstrators remained in place the building in protest at ETH’s complicity in the genocide, they were carried out of the building one by one by police officers.
The demonstrators did not respond to the police actions with active resistance; their resistance was passive in nature. Following the clearance, some of their keffiyehs, flags and banners were seized by the police on the grounds that they were dangerous and conveyed messages of hatred.
In addition, orders were issued barring them from Zurich city centre for 24 hours.
In response to the demonstration, ETH filed a total of 40 criminal complaints, signed by the head of ETH’s Security Department, including against its own students.
Filing criminal complaints is a voluntary act; ETH could have chosen not to do so, but by taking this action, it actively and deliberately chose to criminalise solidarity with Palestine.
Solidarity with Palestine is therefore to be punished:
Empowered by the criminal complaints filed by ETH, the public prosecutor’s office issued summary penalty orders against some of the demonstrators.
The costs, comprising the fine, the penalty and the legal costs, amounted to over 1,000 Swiss francs in most cases.
Added to this is a criminal record entry accusing the protesters of trespass.