Evacuation of the Radboud building seems to have been halted by the police, the building is closely guarded and several arrests have been made
The police have indefinitely stopped the eviction action of the occupied university building in Nijmegen. Since Tuesday morning, demonstrators have been sitting on Heyendaalseweg in a building containing, among other things, superconducting magnets and cooling gases. A police raid is difficult, because “life-threatening substances could be released in the room in question”. A number of occupiers have just come out and are being arrested and locked up.
The police have deployed negotiators and given the occupiers the opportunity to leave on their own initiative, a spokesperson said. That didn’t work before, no one left the building on their own in the evening. But “we are not risking the safety of our emergency workers and that of occupiers,” the police said. Ultimately, a number of people left voluntarily. More information and updates on this are expected tomorrow, police said.
The spokesperson says he does not know how many people are still inside. The area around the Goudsmit Pavilion has been cordoned off and “anyone who leaves the building will be arrested”. Earlier in the evening, activists who left were not arrested. It is unclear whether the police will eventually actively evacuate the area again. “This is the strategy at the moment,” the spokesperson said.
The activists of Nijmegen Student Encampment want the university to discontinue announced new collaborations with Israeli institutions. A spokesperson called it disappointing that members of the Executive Board did not want to discuss this in discussions on Tuesday. University spokespersons confirm that the discussions were only aimed at getting the activists to leave, and according to them there was no question of negotiating the conditions.
The activists also said that they had thoroughly investigated the danger of their action in the magnet laboratory in advance. According to the spokesperson, the activists will not leave until the demands are met.