Schriftelijke bijdrage Wiktor Misiak

PERSONAL WRITTEN STATEMENT ON THE ISSUE OF POLICE BRUTALITY DURING THE RECENT PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTS

As a student at the UvA, I am terrified and appalled by the way in which the university administration and the ‘driehoek’ chose to approach the matter of the suppression of the predominantly peaceful Gaza solidarity protests. The excessive violence used has made me, and many students I am in contact with, extremely unsafe regarding our ability to express our political views without the fear of assault or retribution. I have talked to people who gave accounts about the way in which the police, which ostensibly are supposed to protect them from harm, dealt with the overwhelmingly non-violent student activists. The few examples these eyewitnesses mentioned included acts such as attacks on the students who had already surrendered and were led to be transported to the police stations, frequent insults to the dignity of arrestees such as denying permission to use the bathroom for those waiting to be processed, as well as the most serious issue of police deliberately attempting to cause as much damage as possible to the students health during the arrests themselves, such as by deliberately and unnecessarily beating them in the heads and faces with fists and batons. The last tactic might be justified where the officers face a vicious, criminal element that poses a direct threat to their lives but is by no means permissible when facing overwhelmingly nonviolent student protestors.

These accusations cannot be dismissed as mere hearsay, as many of these acts have also been documented on video, whether by the media or by the activists themselves. Furthermore, I would like to use this opportunity to challenge some of the misinformation that has been spread by those negatively inclined toward these protests. Despite their largely peaceful nature, there has been a concerted effort to paint them as violent and intimidating. An example of this is an UvA statement from the 8th of April, where the situation at one of the encampments has been described as containing "incidents involving fireworks being thrown and people being beaten," with this being used as a justification for the violent dispersal. What this statement fails to mention is that these beatings, fireworks, and flare attacks were perpetrated by masked hooligans who attempted to attack the encampment, as captured on multiple videos. The student activists were not the perpetrators, but rather the victims.

Considering this example, I would like to appeal to the council to not take the arguments of those opposed to the student cause at face value but to evaluate all the information in an open and unbiased way. Taking all the above into consideration, I hope the committee will use all measures at its disposal to reduce the threat faced by the peaceful student activists trying to exercise their basic rights and that it will give the greatest attention possible to the accusations levied against the police force. Thank you for taking this statement into account. I hope it has shed some light on the issue at hand. Sincerely Wiktor Misiak, student, Universiteit van Amsterdam