New York police raid Columbia University

NY. A large number of New York police officers entered the campus of Columbia University on Tuesday night, after officials from that city assured that the protest carried out by students in solidarity with Palestine and in rejection of the complicity of the Palestinians was infiltrated by agitators. President Joe Biden with the war that Israel launched against the Gaza Strip, local US media reported.

Special police units broke into the Hamilton Hall building on campus using a huge truck and a ramp, entering through a window, as the university students erected barricades and closed the entrance doors, NBC and CNN reported.

In the operation, police loaded about 50 detainees onto a bus, each with their hands tied behind their backs with zip ties, the entire scene illuminated with the flashing red and blue lights of police vehicles. Ambulances and other emergency services vehicles remained at the scene.

Hours before, New York authorities urged students to remain sheltered, NBC noted.

Mayor Eric Admas said the Columbia protest was co-opted and further advised students participating in the demonstrations to leave the area and recommended parents tell their children to leave “before the situation gets worse.”

Earlier Tuesday, students who occupied a Columbia University building and vowed to fight attempts to evict them, as institutions stepped up pressure to contain pro-Palestinian protests that have spread to dozens of campuses across the United States. .

Columbia University said Tuesday that students who occupied the campus’s Hamilton Hall building are at risk of expulsion.

Afp’s photo

However, many of them promised to keep up the protest. “We will remain here, drawing on the lessons of our people (Gaza), who remain still and steadfast even in the worst conditions,” a protester who did not want to give her name told reporters from the building.

The occupation of the prestigious university’s Hamilton Hall occurred hours after the center’s authorities said they had begun suspending students for not complying with an order to evacuate the camp they had set up in the gardens.

Young people with their faces covered broke windows and blocked the building’s entrances with tables, according to images shared on social networks.

“After 206 days of genocide and more than 34,000 Palestinian martyrs, members of the Columbia community recaptured Hamilton Hall shortly after midnight,” the group said in a statement, alluding to Israel’s war in Gaza.

The group also said it had renamed the building “Hind’s Hall,” in honor of a six-year-old Gazan girl killed in the Israeli offensive against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

The protesters said they will remain in the building until their demands are met, including that Columbia University reject all funding linked to Israel.

The center rejected that demand. The rector, Minouche Shafik, said Monday that they “failed to reach an agreement” with the students, according to a statement.

The seizure of the building was condemned by President Joe Biden. “The president believes that taking a campus building by force is absolutely the wrong approach,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. “It is not an example of peaceful protest,” he added.

They point out that student authorities called the police to evict them

Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, one of the main protest groups at Columbia University, denounced that they were the authorities of the study center to carry out the eviction operation, the BBC noted.

“To be clear, Columbia University called the police to take action against its own students for the second time in two weeks, on the 56th anniversary of the last time police were called to campus to arrest more than 700 protesting. the Vietnam War (and) the gentrification of Harlem, April 30, 1968.”

Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine are posting videos of the operation.

With information from Ap, Afp and Reuters