“Harsh” sentencing won’t end protests, only escalate conflicts
Media student Emma Shi was one of the protesters at the May protests last year. Her partner Simone Zhu was sentenced to one month in jail this week. She feels that the media is only showing one side of the protests and shares her side of the story here.
The recent legal case of three protesters in the occupation of UvA, May 8th, 2024 has received national attention. The protester Simone Zhu, who was the student climbing onto the bulldozer to save one comrade falling underneath, got the sentencing of two months in prison. As Simone’s partner and who brought her to the occupation, I would like to clarify the reasoning why we, as part of student protesters (not abstract icons or “key figures”), were present in the protest, in contradiction to the opinion proposed by the public prosecutor. We went to protests in response to unnecessary and disproportionate violence against other human beings, both in the occupied langs in Palestine and here in Amsterdam: our comrades were already violently evicted by ME the day before from Roeterseiland campus.
It should be clear that no student went to the occupation to start violence; instead, speaking as one participant who stood till the very end that until all students got evacuated on May 8th, no violence occurred before the excessively violent eviction was initiated without proper warning from ME. Since the warning was announced in Dutch it barely left time for evacuation.
I was helping other students to leave from the exit via a queue when the ME abruptly surrounded us. Simone was among the ones who were supposed to leave (as the one carrying all our devices/documents) but didn't get to. We then turned to defend other students in front of the barricade, throwing light objects towards the direction of the bulldozer to slow it down, which was later on speculated by the prosecutor and some press as throwing a “spear” without evidence (i.e., dismissed by the court). The situation escalated when the bulldozer kept pushing forward with one comrade already falling in front: after every other means failed, Simone had no choice but to climb onto the bulldozer to save the other student from being crushed, causing her to be beaten beyond unconsciousness and arrested, as multiple public footages have shown.
Unapologetically, from the trauma imposed on both Simone and I as Chinese activists, it is merely an instinctual response to protect other students under excessive violence. When deciding if we should go and support the occupation (since I just returned home on May 8th after being arrested for peacefully staying outside the barricade the night before), our final decision became clear: disproportionate violence would happen and was intended by the police to happen. Then we'd rather it happened to us than any other student, since we were both experienced in extreme physical violence that could otherwise severely traumatize another student. As expected, the ME on site punched me in the face till I bled, merely as the response of frustration since I wouldn't fall down to let him sway his baton on other students behind me. The police arrested Simone and declined her basic medical support for hours, forcing her to lick multiple bleeding wounds clean under custody, leaving scars on her hand till today. Somehow, when there was not enough time for all students wishing to leave to leave, before the police started striking with the purpose of striking, it is nevertheless sensible for the court to suggest students on site to just “stay” at home and to witness disproportionate violence with compliance.
Simone was sentenced because she expressed no regret before the court hearing; no regrets for protecting other students on site and no regrets for save comrades with the price of violence, degradation, inhumane treatment under custody. To not do it again means we would need to stay away when our classmates were bleeding, struggling, falling before the wheels of police brutality, facing assault without any justified means to defend, as how we are all asked to stay silent for Palestinians dying in their land.
As one UvA student who was only three steps away from Simone on the barricade on May 8th, my answer would not and could not be different: no amount of sentencing will be enough to intimidate us away from protecting fellow students, just as no amount of police brutality or legal bans would stop us from supporting the lives struggling in Gaza and the West Bank. From the very beginning, violence is the choice of the other party, not ours. More judicial violence on top would make no difference but pave for escalation: every incident of injustice in NL, is the reflection of tremendously worse injustice in Gaza, the West Bank and all occupied lands. As the support demonstration is going to happen this Friday, 16:00 in Dam Square, the only response from us would be: we will do and do it more, if harsher injustice is the only response to disproportionate violence against students and to unacceptable injustice imposed on Palestinian lands.
Emma Shi is doing a research master in Media Studies. At the time of the protests, she did a bachelor Literary and Cultural Analysis at the UvA.
