Coimbra students took advantage of today’s ceremony celebrating the 55th anniversary of the 1969 Academic Crisis to ask for the floor, this time to talk about Palestine, and Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, present at the initiative, granted them the opportunity.
Shortly before the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, spoke at the ceremony to pay tribute to the 1969 Academic Crisis and to Alberto Martins, president of the Coimbra Academic Association (AAC) that year, some students wore a banner in the colors of the Palestinian flag, which read: “We ask for the floor because the silence is deafening”.
“We want to talk, we want to talk,” the students demanded, imitating the gesture made by Alberto Martins during the Estado Novo regime on April 17, 1969, which marked the beginning of the Academic Crisis.
After the requests were ignored by the AAC leader who was making the introductory notes for each of the speakers, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa took note of the protest, noting that there would be those who wanted to speak.
“Let those who want to speak come forward. Come, come,” asked the President of the Republic.
Joana Coelho, a biology student at the University of Coimbra, took the floor and drew attention to “an issue that everyone is ignoring”, pointing out that “more than 30,000 people” have died in the Gaza Strip since October 2023.
“We have to talk about this. Genocide is happening. Our colleagues are having their universities bombed. We have to talk about it,” he said.
In a short speech, Joana Coelho called for “the recognition of the independent State of Palestine” and an “immediate and permanent” ceasefire.
At the beginning of his speech, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa recalled that Portugal has always defended Palestine’s right “to an independent state”.
Speaking to the Lusa news agency, Joana Coelho, from the “Coimbra for Palestine” movement, explained that the students collected signatures in the past to call a general assembly to discuss the issue, but that the same student meeting was scheduled for a non-academic period and ended up being interrupted due to a “lack of quorum”.
The student accuses the current AAC board of trying to dismiss the issue and silence the struggle.
Questioned by Lusa, AAC president Renato Daniel said that the position of the current directorate-general “is very clear, of the existence of peace and the existence of sovereignty of all states”.
“We’ve already presented our motion and now we’re in the consultation period with these colleagues to submit proposals for amendments that we hope will have space in a future magna,” he said.
The president also rejected any attempt to silence the cause, saying that the students have to respect the agenda of the magnas and that, in one situation, this didn’t happen.
At the general assembly in March, the president of that body threatened to call security when Joana Coelho gave a speech on Palestine, according to a video by TvAAC.
“That’s how the table decided, that’s how it’s going to be,” said the head of the magna, who would later postpone the discussion of a motion on Palestine because there was no quorum.
In the minutes of the January general assembly, it is noted that Renato Daniel refuses to make a distinction between human lives, defending a general position that expresses sorrow “for the thousands of lives lost in Palestine and Israel”.