Macron says the Olympic opening ceremony on the Seine could be moved to stadium for security reasons

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Macron says the Olympic opening ceremony on the Seine could be moved to stadium for security reasons

2024-04-15 21:43 Last Updated At：22:01

French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday said the opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics planned on the River Seine could be shifted instead to the country's national stadium if the security threat is deemed too high.

France is on high security alert ahead of the Paris Olympics and Paralympics, which are expected to draw millions of visitors to the country.

Security concerns are notably high for the the exceptional opening ceremony, which involves boats carrying athletes along the Seine on a 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) parade and huge crowds watching from the embankments.

Speaking to French media BFM-TV and RMC, Macron said France’s law enforcement forces will be mobilized at an exceptional level for the security of the open-air event.

“But if we think there are risks, depending on our analysis of the context, we have fallback scenarios," Macron said. “There are plan Bs and plan Cs.”

The July 26 event is set to be the first Olympic opening ceremony held outside a stadium setting. About 10,500 athletes will parade through the heart of the French capital on boats on the Seine along the route ending in front of the Trocadéro.

To limit security risks, Macron said organizers could decide to shorten the itinerary of the parade on the Seine, and even to “repatriate the ceremony to the Stade de France” just outside Paris for a more conventional opening event. Macron did not give more details about the alternative plans.

Organizers had originally planned a grandiose opening ceremony for as many as 600,000 people, most watching free of charge from riverbanks. But security and logistical concerns have led the government to progressively scale back its ambitions. Earlier this year, the overall number of spectators was reduced to around 300,000.

The French government also decided that tourists won’t be given free access to watch the opening ceremony because of security concerns. Free access will be invitation-only instead.

Asked about the possibility of the opening ceremony being held in the stadium, Nicole Deal, the chief of security at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said: “From my point of view, I want the best experience for the athletes. Security is an underpinning and a foundation. We’re not the main show, so I want the best experience for Team USA athletes.”

Macron insisted that, for now, plans for the opening ceremony remain the same.

“It’s a world first. We can do it and we will do it,” the French President said.

France has repeatedly been hit by deadly Islamic State attacks, including the Bataclan theater massacre in 2015 in which extremists opened fire on concert-goers and held hostages for hours. French troops have also fought against Islamic extremists in the Middle East and Africa.

Last month, the French government increased its security alert posture to the highest level after the deadly attack at a Russian concert hall and the Islamic State’s claim of responsibility.

Macron said that security perimeters will be installed “days, even weeks” before the opening ceremony. He added that road traffic in the high-security zone will be brought to a standstill, and that French authorities will use "drone systems, coding, cyber protection,” in their safeguarding efforts.

Answering to a viewer who expressed concerns about her son attending the opening ceremony, Macron said “If there’s one place where your son will be safe, it’s here."

“There are always risks in life,” he said. "And we see it every day, unfortunately. But we’ve given ourselves the means to do it.”

During the hour-long interview, Macron also said he wants "to do everything possible to have an Olympic truce” for the Paris Games, amid a risk of an escalating conflict in the Middle East, Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its third year, and Sudan, hurtling towards a large-scale calamity of starvation and mass death after a year-long war.

The Olympic Truce is a modern revival of the ancient Greek tradition to ensure warring city states allowed safe passage for athletes to the games. Every two years, the host country of the upcoming Olympics introduces a U.N. resolution that other member states can co-sponsor.

“We want to work towards an Olympic truce and I think it is an occasion for me to engage with a lot of our partners,” Macron said, adding that he would ask Chinese leader Xi Jinping to weigh in and use his influence.

“The Chinese president is coming to Paris in a few weeks, and I’m going to ask him to help me,” Macron said. “This is a diplomatic moment of peace.”

Macron also backed the decision to allow Russian athletes to compete in the Olympics despite the Ukraine invasion, but under a neutral flag. Additionally, he defended the participation of Israeli athletes under their country’s flag despite its offensive in Gaza in which 33,000 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced.

“We cannot say that Israel is attacking,” Macron said. “Israel was a victim of a terrorist attack to which it is now responding to in Gaza.”

Associated Press reporter Barbara Surk in Nice and National Sports Writer Eddie Pells in New York contributed to this report.

Violence, chaos erupts on campuses as protesters and counter-protesters clash over the war in Gaza

2024-05-02 06:28 Last Updated At：06:31

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A brawl erupted at UCLA after a pro-Palestinian encampment was “forcefully attacked,” the school's chancellor said Wednesday, while activists at the University of Wisconsin in Madison clashed with police officers who destroyed their tents, in a day of escalating violence on some college campuses over the war in Gaza.

Fifteen people were injured during the UCLA confrontation, including one person who was hospitalized, according to the president of the University of California system. The chaotic scenes unfolded Wednesday after police burst into a building occupied by anti-war protesters at Columbia University on Tuesday night, breaking up a demonstration that had paralyzed the school.

Chancellor Gene Block at UCLA said in a statement that “a group of instigators” came on campus Tuesday to “forcefully attack” the pro-Palestinian encampment, prompting the school to ask for assistance from outside law enforcement.

After a couple of hours of scuffles between dueling demonstrators at the University of California, Los Angeles, police wearing helmets and face shields separated the groups and restored calm. Later Wednesday, pro-Palestinian protesters rebuilt a barricade around their encampment. There were no counter-protesters in sight, and law enforcement officers were deployed throughout the campus.

In Madison on Wednesday, police with shields removed all but one tent and shoved protesters, resulting in a scrum. Four officers were injured, including a state trooper who was hit in the head with a skateboard, according to University of Wisconsin police spokesperson Marc Lovicott.

Within hours, protesters had erected more tents at the UW campus.

More than 30 people were arrested, most of them released without charges, but four were charged with battering law enforcement, police said.

Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies that support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses nationwide in a student movement unlike any other this century. The ensuing police crackdowns echoed actions decades ago against a much larger protest movement protesting the Vietnam War.

This is all playing out in an election year in the U.S., raising questions about whether young voters — who are critical for Democrats — will back President Joe Biden's reelection effort, given his staunch support of Israel.

There have been confrontations with law enforcement and more than 1,300 arrests. In rare instances, university officials and protest leaders struck agreements to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.

The clashes at UCLA erupted when the pro-Palestinian protesters tried to expand their encampment late Tuesday night. Counter-protesters then tried to pull down the parade barricades, plywood and wooden pallets surrounding the encampment. In the chaos, firecrackers exploded.

Police left the scene around 11:30 p.m., and police in riot gear showed up at 1:45 a.m. to establish a perimeter. Pro-Israel protesters threw traffic cones and chairs, released pepper spray, and tore down barriers around the encampment. Some from the pro-Palestinian camp hopped over the barriers and scuffled with the counter-protesters.

Chancellor Block offered his sympathy to those who were injured and anyone who feels unsafe on campus, and promised the university will conduct a thorough investigation that he said may lead to arrests, expulsions and dismissals. In addition, Block said the administration is examining its own security response.

“However one feels about the encampment, this attack on our students, faculty and community members was utterly unacceptable,” Block said. “It has shaken our campus to its core and — adding to other abhorrent incidents that we have witnessed and that have circulated on social media over the past several days — further damaged our community’s sense of security.”

UCLA senior Edgar Gomez, who ventured outside his dorm to watch the ruckus unfold, said he saw counter-protesters tearing up Palestinian flags, and pepper spray hung in the air as the two sides fought.

“I’ve never seen this happen before," said Gomez, adding that he isn’t with either group. "I’ve never seen people get so heated.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass both called for accountability of those involved in the melee. A spokesperson for the governor said outside law enforcement was sent to the campus after “unacceptable” delays in the university’s police force response to the clashes.

The nationwide campus demonstrations began at Columbia to protest Israel’s offensive in Gaza after Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. Militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to stamp out Hamas, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry there.

Late Tuesday, New York City police officers entered Columbia's campus and cleared a tent encampment, along with Hamilton Hall where a stream of officers used a ladder to climb through a second-floor window, and police said protesters inside presented no substantial resistance. They had seized the Ivy League school building about 20 hours earlier.

Protesters first set up a tent encampment at Columbia almost two weeks ago. The school sent in police to clear the tents the following day, arresting more than 100 people. But the protesters returned.

Negotiations between the protesters and the college ground to a halt in recent days, and the school set a Monday deadline for the activists to abandon the tent encampment or be suspended.

Instead, protesters took over Hamilton Hall early Tuesday, carrying in furniture and metal barricades.

In a letter to senior police officials, Columbia President Nemat Shafik, who uses the first name Minouche, said the administration asked officers to remove protesters from the occupied building and a tent encampment “with the utmost regret.”

Columbia on Wednesday called Hamilton Hall “an active crime scene” under NYPD investigation and limited campus access to people with Columbia identification and essential personnel, barring the media.

“After the University learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized, and blockaded, we were left with no choice,” the school said in a statement.

Fabien Lugo, a first-year accounting student who said he was not involved in the protests, said he opposed the university’s decision to call in police.

“This is too intense,” he said. “It feels like more of an escalation than a de-escalation.”

Blocks away from Columbia, at The City College of New York, demonstrators were in a standoff with police outside the public college’s main gate. Video posted on social media by reporters late Tuesday showed officers forcing some people to the ground and shoving others as they cleared the street and sidewalks.

Close to 300 protesters were arrested in the crackdowns at Columbia and City College, officials said.

Brown University, another Ivy League school, reached an agreement Tuesday with protesters on its Rhode Island campus. Demonstrators closed their encampment after administrators agreed to consider a vote to divest from Israel in October — apparently the first U.S. college to agree to such a demand.

Meanwhile, protest encampments were cleared or closed up voluntarily at schools from Flagstaff, Arizona, to New Orleans.

At Portland State in Oregon, school officials said some 50 protesters left a library on campus that had been occupied since Monday after administrators offered not to seek criminal charges or other discipline. An unknown number of people remained in the library Wednesday.

Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests antisemitic, while Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, organizers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.

Offenhartz and Frederick reported from New York. Associated Press journalists around the country contributed to this report, including Cedar Attanasio, Jonathan Mattise, Stefanie Dazio, Jae Hong, Colleen Long, Karen Matthews, Sarah Brumfield, Carolyn Thompson, Philip Marcelo, Corey Williams and Felicia Fonseca.