Le Figaro Lyon
“Don’t add fuel to the fire”
.
The president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Laurent Wauquiez, requested, by letter dated Monday, January 29, the cancellation of a conference organized by a student union at the University of Lyon 2 and entitled
“War Crimes , crimes against humanity, genocide?
Israel in court!”
.
The event which was to be held in the presence of a Lyon lawyer on Thursday was finally canceled by the management of the faculty on Tuesday, after an intervention by the prefecture to this effect.
Intervention requested by Crif Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the first to alert state services on this subject Monday morning, through its president, lawyer Paul Richard Zelmati.
“The title itself is enough to understand the rhetoric at work behind this conference
,” said Laurent Wauquiez in his letter addressed to Nathalie Dompnier, the president of Lyon 2 University, consulted by
Le Figaro
.
It is the one broadcast, the day after October 7, by militant speeches consisting of putting the Hamas terrorist attack and the military response of the State of Israel on the same level.
Rhetoric according to which Hamas is not a terrorist, Islamist and anti-Semitic organization, but “a resistance movement”
.
A speaker at the origin of a complaint against Israel
Supported by the Solidaires student-es Lyon organization, this conference was to deal with the filing of complaints before international justice, in the presence of Lyon lawyer Gilles Devers.
The latter had filed a collective complaint against Israel before the international criminal court in The Hague for genocide in November.
“In compliance with the regulatory framework, which allows any student organization to offer conferences or round tables on its premises, the university had given a favorable response to the holding of this event
,” specifies the university management.
Before announcing its cancellation at the request of the prefecture, the state services having highlighted possible risks in terms of public order and security, specifies the entourage of the prefect to
Figaro
.
Crif Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes welcomed this cancellation.
“The university could not let this conference be held in an incandescent context, if only for questions of public order
,” stressed Paul Richard Zelmati, its president, to Le
Figaro
.
The university is there to disseminate and ensure knowledge, not to maintain propaganda.
“There needs to be pluralism in interventions
. ”
This is why he alerted the prefecture, the region and the Minister of Higher Education, Sylvie Retailleau.
For his part, Laurent Wauquiez pointed to a
“fallacious presentation”
put into perspective with the very sharp increase in anti-Semitic acts since October 7.
Also read “They remove the Cohens and Levys from the mailboxes”: in Lyon, the concern of the Jewish community in the face of anti-Semitic acts
At the beginning of October, a previous conference organized at Lyon 2 University had already sparked an outcry on the eve of the Hamas attack.
It anticipated the intervention of Maryam Abbu Daqqa, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, an organization classified as terrorist.
Although she had been canceled from the speeches by the organizers, at the request of the university, she was nevertheless very present in the audience and was able to speak at the end of the conference.
Maryam Abbu Daqqa was then expelled from French territory even though she was initially scheduled to speak at the national assembly on October 9.