Announcement of the IRBio Executive Committee in reference to the events in Catalonia October 2019
The IRBio’s executive board is concerned by the terrifying incidents occurred during the last days that are affecting the citizens of Catalonia, including students, professors and the rest of the university community to which our Institute belongs to. Specially, we want to show our solidarity and support to the faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of the University of Barcelona, in which one of his students has lost one eye because of a projectile during the police operation in the Barcelona airport on October 14th.
We believe that the University has to be a referent institution for launching the transformation of the Society in both scientific and humanistic progress, and as experts in the study of diversity, we believe this is inherent feature of the health of any system, and therefore, it must be protected. In this context, we feel with the responsibility to call for the defense of freedom of ideas and speech, and the defense of the fundamental right of all citizens in general, and of the members of university community in particular, to perform peaceful protest in a safe way as a transforming tool distinctive of a democratic system respectful with diversity.
October 22nd, 2019