In New York on Tuesday night, it was in riot gear, supported by an intervention vehicle with a ladder, that dozens, even hundreds of police officers entered the campus.
Caitlin Ochs / REUTERS
The large and prestigious Manhattan University has been the center of two weeks of movement on American campuses in support of the Palestinian cause. Dozens of people were arrested on Tuesday night.
The New York police intervened manu militari on Tuesday, April 30 in the evening at Columbia University , at the heart of the pro-Palestinian movement on American campuses, to disperse the demonstrators who had barricaded themselves in a building since the previous night. All the demonstrators were evacuated from the campus, according to American media.
American student anger has spread for two weeks from the large universities of the East Coast to those of California through theSouth and the Center, recalling the demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s in New York at night March (around 01 : 30 GMT Wednesday), it was in riot gear, with the support of an intervention vehicle with a ladder, that dozens, even hundreds of police officers, entered the campus. Helmet officers, climbing the ladder, and then entered through a window into the residential building.
Dozens of people, some wearing keffiyehs, were arrested and put in police buses, AFP noted. Outside the campus, the crowd was shouting “Free Palestine!”.
“Last night’s events on campus gave us no choice”, the president of the university, Minouche Shafik, wrote in a letter made public asking the New York police to intervene on the perimeter of this private institution in Manhattan. For two weeks, she and many other university presidents across the country have faced protesters who live on their campuses to oppose Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas. In his letter to the New York police, Minouche Shafik asks law enforcement to “maintain a presence on campus at least until May 17, to maintain order and ensure that no camps are established.”
“town” tent
On the night from Monday to Tuesday, a few dozen protesters barricaded themselves in a building, Hamilton Hall. The building was renamed “Hind’s Hall” by the pro-Palestinian group “Columbia University Apartheid Divest”, in tribute to a six-year-old girl who was killed in Gaza. On their Instagram account, this group denied a “attack” of the campus. Columbia’s president began Monday at “turn it off” to the administration of students who refused the “town” of tents.
Six months before the presidential election in a polarized country, this student movement has provoked a strong response from the political world. Joe Biden “something has to be done” against this “paid activists”Republican candidate Donald Trump said Tuesday night on Fox News. “We must stop the anti-Semitism that affects our country today”he added. “While Columbia University is in turmoil, Joe Biden is absent because he is afraid to address the subject.” “, wrote on X the Republican leader in the House of Representatives Mike Johnson this afternoon. It has long called for its president, Minouche Shafik, to leave.
Allegations of anti-Semitism
“The wrong approach is to forcefully live in a university building” and it does not represent “not an example of a peaceful demonstration”on thunder before the intervention of the police John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council of the Democratic President Joe Biden.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators are calling on their universities to cut ties with sponsors or companies linked to Israel. Columbia refuses. These new demonstrations against Palestine in the United States have been ruling the electric debate since October between freedom of expression and accusations of anti-Semitism. The country has the largest number of Jews in the world after Israel, and millions of Arab-Muslim Americans.
2024-05-01 03:38:43
#York #police #remove #proPalestinian #demonstrators #Columbia #University
