image source, Reuters
Photo caption, According to the New York Police, the number of arrests in the student demonstrations at Columbia University amounts to 300.Article information
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1 mayo 2024
Tension at US universities due to the war in Gaza continues to rise, with evictions, arrests and confrontations, and the expansion of student mobilizations demanding a boycott of companies and individuals with ties to Israel on more than 25 campuses across the country. least 21 states.
This Tuesday night all attention was focused on the east coast, where security forces evicted several barricaded students from a Columbia University building in New York and made some 300 arrests.
But it didn’t take long for it to move to the other end of the country, when clashes began to occur at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) between students camping out for the same cause since Thursday and pro-Israel counterprotesters.
According to witnesses and media on the scene, the clashes at UCLA began when pro-Israel counterprotesters in white hoods and masks appeared on campus at around 10:00 p.m. local time. Images recorded at the scene show them throwing objects at the pro-Palestinian protesters and trying to tear down the security perimeter fences that surround the camp.
Skirmishes between both groups had already been reported on Sunday, and tension had been growing since then.
“Whatever feelings one may have about the camp, this attack on our students, faculty and community members was absolutely unacceptable,” UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said in a statement Wednesday.
And he reported that the university is gathering information about what happened Tuesday night and will conduct a full investigation that “could lead to arrests, expulsions and suspensions.”
image source, Reuters
On Tuesday the university declared the anti-war camp illegal and reported that participating in it could lead to suspension and, “after a due process of investigation of the student’s conduct, could lead to expulsion.”
That same day it was learned that the congressional committee investigating acts of anti-Semitism would call Rector Block to testify. On May 23 he will have to testify, along with representatives of other higher education institutions, about his center’s actions to stop possible prejudice and harassment of Jewish students.
Faced with the clashes, which Vice Chancellor for Strategic Communications Mary Osako described as “horrible acts of violence,” UCLA administrators called the police.
And it “immediately responded” to a request for support from the university, according to the office of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
Although several sources present emphasize that the agents did not intervene until several hours after the arrival of the counterprotesters.
As a result, classes were canceled Wednesday and UCLA officials announced that some parts of the campus will remain closed until Monday.
The operation in Columbia
At the other end of the country, on the campus of Columbia University, in New York, television images showed on Tuesday night numerous agents getting into a military-looking vehicle and accessing the Hamilton building on campus through a window.
Meanwhile, hundreds of troops surrounded the area around the educational center, where there were also numerous protesters, chanting “shame on Columbia.”
Several police buses left the campus loaded with what are presumably the detained protesters, cheered on by other young people present who have not been arrested, BBC journalist Nomia Iqbal reported from the scene.
A few hours after the intervention began, the New York Police Department confirmed to the BBC that all protesters had been evicted from Hamilton Hall.
This Wednesday the New York police reported that the number of arrests rises to 300.
“This drastic escalation of many months of protests brought the university to the brink, creating a disturbing environment for everyone and raising security risks to an intolerable level,” Columbia University President Minouche Shafik said Wednesday. .
Shafik, who took office in July, called for calm in a statement.
image source, Reuters
Caption, Agents entering Columbia through a window.
This is the second time that police have intervened in Columbia in less than two weeks to quell protests against the Israeli military offensive in Gaza.
The protests had intensified in the early hours of Tuesday when pro-Palestinian protesters barricaded themselves in Hamilton Hall, which they renamed after Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old girl found dead in Gaza earlier this year.
This occurred after some students were suspended by the university for defying the Monday deadline given by the authorities for them to leave the camp set up on campus.
image source, Reuters
Photo caption, The vehicle in which some agents arrived at Columbia University.
“Absolutely wrong”
Columbia University issued a statement on Tuesday confirming that the police had arrived at the campus at 9pm at the request of university authorities to “restore order and security.”
“After the university learned that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, attacked and blocked, we were left with no choice,” the text continues, regretting that “students have chosen to escalate the situation.”
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, said this Tuesday that the takeover of Hamilton Hall was “an absolutely wrong approach” by the students.
The Democratic president has opposed “disgusting, anti-Semitic slurs and violent rhetoric” his entire life, said White House spokesman Andrew Bates.
Biden “respects the right to free expression,” Bates said, but protests must be “peaceful and lawful.”
“Taking control of the building by force is not peaceful, it is wrong,” Bates added.
“And hate speech and hate symbols have no place in the US,” he said.
Former Republican President Donald Trump called the occupation “the Biden protests.”
“It’s all caused by him because he doesn’t know how to talk. He can’t put two sentences together. He has to come out and make a statement because universities are being invaded in this country,” he said.
The Columbia University campus in New York has been one of the epicenters of the wave of protests over Gaza, but not the only one.
The student mobilization to denounce Israel’s actions in the Strip and demand that their respective universities disassociate themselves from companies and individuals that profit from the war has spread to more than 25 campuses in at least 21 states, and has resulted in more than a thousand detainees.
Meanwhile, the Republicans, led by Trump, censure those who protest, whom they directly accuse of anti-Semitism, President Biden has rejected the forceful actions of the students, while his government has been asking Israel to do more for weeks. for guaranteeing human rights and the delivery of humanitarian aid in the strip.
The incursion by Israeli forces into Gaza began in retaliation for the October 7 attack by Hamas militants that left 1,200 dead and took 240 hostages, and has so far claimed the lives of more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to the Ministry of Health of the Strip.
According to the United Nations, there are some 2 million civilians on the brink of famine.
Photo caption, Early Tuesday morning the protesters used chairs, tables and ropes to secure the doors of the building they occupied.
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