Criminalising protest: Pro-Palestine students in France face increased repression

Kylian, 22, studies law at the Sorbonne University in Paris. After the start of the Israeli massacres in Gaza following the Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023, he joined student demonstrations to demand an end to the bombings and to defend Palestinian rights.

Raised in an Algerian family that settled in France in the early 1990s, Kylian was immersed from a young age in a climate of pro-Palestinian activism and support for the right of peoples to self-determination.

“My parents, who were born after their country’s independence in 1962, are very sensitive to issues related to colonisation,” the young man told Middle East Eye using a pseudonym.

“They used to say that Algeria was nicknamed the Mecca of revolutions for having hosted several independence movements in the 1970s and the 1988 congress proclaiming the creation of the State of Palestine,” he added.

Yet, it was his parents who, one evening in May 2024, solemnly asked him to put away his keffiyeh and his “Free Palestine” banners, to no longer march with his fellow students, nor participate in general assemblies and university blockades.

“They were afraid I would be expelled from university, or worse, that I would be arrested by the police,” Kylian said.

“At first, I was angry with them, I accused them of contradicting the values they taught me. But I eventually accepted because I'm aware of all the sacrifices they made, having arrived from Algeria with nothing so that I could pursue higher education and succeed.”

Just as Kylian was reluctantly returning to class, another student, Luiggi, was appearing in court for alleged violence against a security guard during a demonstration at the Sorbonne. The 24-year-old law student at the University of Nanterre was arrested along with 85 of his comrades.

Although the violence he was accused of was not substantiated by witnesses, Luiggi was handed a six month-suspended prison sentence. The university administration expelled him in a decision upheld by the court.

Since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, students, teachers and unions in France have been warning of an intensification of pressure exerted against those who express their support for Palestine.

According to them, activist actions such as demonstrations, public speeches and the occupation of premises are now being criminalised, resulting in disciplinary hearings, administrative sanctions, legal proceedings and, in some cases, criminal records.

Police raids, expulsions and arrests

At the prestigious Sciences Po (Institute of Political Studies) in Paris, one of the key campuses of pro-Palestine mobilisation in France, police raids have been recurrent since the beginning of the war.

They are carried out at the request of the school administration, which has also taken disciplinary measures, including expulsions, against students participating in demonstrations.

Seventy-six students taking part in a protest on campus were violently arrested by the police. They were occupying a lecture theatre to oppose partnerships between Sciences Po and Israeli universities, as well as a proposed law, known as the Yadan bill, accused of criminalising critics of Israel under the guise of fighting antisemitism.

‘There has been a surge in repression of students mobilised for Palestine’

- Manon Moret, National Union of Students of France

Manuel Bompart, national secretary of the left-wing La France Insoumise (France Unbowed, LFI), expressed his support “for the students who have been repressed with fines, profiling and arrests by the police and administration simply for expressing their solidarity with Gaza and rejecting the Yadan law".

Their fellow students raised the alarm about what they see as the increased judicialisation of university life, where mobilisations are more and more resulting in disciplinary or criminal proceedings, rather than being addressed through mediation or standard internal procedures.

Manon Moret, secretary general of the National Union of Students of France (Unef), told Middle East Eye that "there has been a surge in repression of students mobilised for Palestine".

She noticed the heavy-handed intervention of law enforcement on campuses began as soon as the demonstrations against the Gaza war started.

According to her, the higher education ministry asked university presidents to close their institutions for security reasons when general assemblies organised by student activists were taking place inside.

"This has prevented students from having spaces for discussion and mobilisation on the issue," Moret said.

She also pointed to the adoption in July of a law aimed at "combating antisemitism in higher education" that she says aims in reality to put an end to pro-Palestine mobilisation. 

For its critics, the legislation establishes a system of profiling and increased repression of students, including by creating disciplinary committees outside the universities to judge students, in place of the current internal committees.

“This law doesn’t provide more resources to combat antisemitism, but it creates supra-disciplinary structures at the university level and introduces the possibility of a student being expelled for disturbing public order or for actions that disrupt university operations,” Moret said.

The bill’s sponsors argue that pro‑Palestinian protests on university campuses stigmatise Jewish students and say the legislation would enable authorities to “sanction antisemitic behaviour”. Critics, however, warn that it risks conflating legitimate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

Teba, a Sorbonne student accused of removing classmates with Jewish-sounding names from an Instagram group in 2025, is currently bearing the brunt of this conflation.

Following a complaint from students and the university administration, Teba was arrested in a police raid at her home last October and held for 34 hours in a cell at the Central Office for Combating Crimes Against Humanity and Hate Crimes.

She denies the antisemitism charges against her and says she removed the students from the group because they followed the Israeli army’s account. Although she was cleared by her university's disciplinary board, the Sorbonne administration is maintaining her expulsion pending the court’s ruling on her case next week.

Another student currently embroiled in controversy for expressing her support for Palestine has likened her summons before a disciplinary committee to "a blatant attempt at censorship and intimidation, aimed at stifling any future student mobilisation".

Lea, a 19-year-old student at Sciences Po's campus in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, faces sanctions for requesting a minute's silence for Gaza victims during a conference given at her school in March by the president of the National Assembly, Yael Braun-Pivet.

University freedoms in peril

The students' union, Unef, says dozens of pro-Palestine students have been subject to disciplinary measures since the start of the protests, although it does not have precise figures.

Unef's Moret told MEE the repression risks escalating with a new bill aimed at further criminalising student mobilisation.

Submitted to parliament on 26 March by two right-wing MPs, it transforms participation in a university occupation into a criminal offence punishable by one year's imprisonment and a €7,500 fine. If the occupation is characterised as "in concert", such as a general assembly, the penalty would be up to €45,000 in fines and three years in prison.

For the Force Ouvriere trade union in higher education, the bill represents a serious threat because, by allowing the police to intervene freely on campuses "for security reasons", it ends the university “franchise”, a status enjoyed by French universities under which law enforcement cannot take action without their consent.

“Under current legislation, only the university president can authorise law enforcement to act on university grounds,” the union points out, adding that the education code guarantees students the right to express themselves freely on campus regarding political, economic, social and cultural issues, and to exercise this freedom individually and collectively.

In France, students have historically used their freedom of expression during pivotal events in history. They demonstrated for the end of French colonisation in Algeria and sparked the events of May 1968, which led to the resignation of President Charles de Gaulle. They also marched in 2003 against the US invasion of Iraq.

However, this historic role of the university is disappearing as the level of repression has reached extraordinary heights, a teacher at Sciences Po Paris told MEE.

“Previously, students who protested could be accused of vandalism. Now, even occupying a lecture theatre is a problem and could lead to prosecution or a criminal record,” the professor, who did not want to reveal their name for fear of reprisals, said.

“The atmosphere at Sciences Po is toxic. Both tenured and precarious faculty are bearing the brunt of these divisions,” they added, deploring “the development of academic censorship of any criticism of Israeli policy”.

“We are careful, even about what we say in class, and it is sometimes difficult to give students a voice,” they added.

Since the beginning of the war, dozens of left-wing politicians, trade unionists and ordinary activists campaigning to stop the massacres in Gaza have been prosecuted in France for "apology for terrorism". One of them, Francois Burgat, a renowned French specialist on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and former National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) research director, was acquitted in 2025 but in April, a one-year suspended prison sentence was requested on appeal against him.

According to Robi Morder, a political scientist and specialist in student movements, there is an increasing trend of "bringing to court political discussions held in campuses or elsewhere".

Some sociologists warn this ongoing judicialisation of academic life is preparing the ground for an “authoritarian drift” throughout French academia.

"The criminalisation of political life is particularly visible on the issue of Palestine,” Morder told MEE. “The pretext of fighting antisemitism allows the government to justify an increasingly repressive policy."