At Columbia and City University of New York, police cleared demonstrators out in a single day
Police deployed a heavy presence on US college campuses Wednesday after forcibly clearing away some weeks-long protests in opposition to Israel’s struggle with Hamas.
Dozens of police vehicles patrolled on the University of California, Los Angeles campus in response to violent clashes in a single day when counter-protesters attacked an encampment of pro-Palestinian college students.
At Columbia University in New York City, which has been the epicenter of the demonstrations, police have been on standby after officers marched onto campus late Tuesday to finish the protests there.
The sight of helmeted police at two of America’s most prestigious universities left some college students dismayed.
“I don’t think we should have a heavy police force on campus,” UCLA scholar Mark Torre, 22, instructed AFP as he surveyed the scene from behind metallic boundaries.
“But more and more, day by day, I think it’s a necessary evil, to at least keep safety on campus.”
At Columbia and on the City University of New York, the place police cleared demonstrators out in a single day, some college students decried “rough and aggressive” ways utilized by officers.
“We were assaulted, brutally arrested. And I was held for up to six hours before being released, pretty banged up, got stomped on, got cut up,” one CUNY scholar who gave his title solely as Jose instructed AFP.
A medical scholar providing therapy to scholar detainees as they have been launched described a litany of accidents.
“We’ve seen things like severe head traumas, concussions, someone was knocked unconscious in the encampment by police, someone was thrown down the stairs,” the scholar, who gave her title as Isabel, mentioned.
About 300 arrests have been made at Columbia and CUNY, Police Commissioner Edward Caban instructed a information convention Wednesday.
Mayor Eric Adams blamed “outside agitators” for ratcheting up tensions. Students at Columbia have denied that outsiders have been concerned.
The college’s president Minouche Shafik, who has come beneath fireplace over her choice to name in police, mentioned Wednesday the flip of occasions “filled me with deep sadness.”
“I am sorry we reached this point,” she mentioned in a press release.
Wave of campus unrest
Demonstrators have gathered in a minimum of 30 US universities since final month, usually erecting tent encampments to protest the hovering demise rely from Israel’s struggle within the Gaza Strip.
The protests have posed a problem to school directors attempting to steadiness free speech rights with complaints of felony exercise, anti-Semitism and hate speech.
The administration of President Joe Biden — whose help for Israel has outraged many protesters — has additionally tried to stroll that line.
“We believe it’s a small number of students who are causing this disruption, and if they’re going to protest, Americans have the right to do it in a peaceful way within the law,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre instructed reporters.
Biden’s rival within the November election, Donald Trump, voiced his full-throated help for the police response at Columbia.
“It was a beautiful thing to watch. New York’s finest,” he instructed a rally in Wisconsin.
“To every college president, I say remove the encampments immediately, vanquish the radicals and take back our campuses for all of the normal students.”
‘Unlawful meeting’
On Tuesday night time, police had entered Columbia’s campus and climbed into Hamilton Hall — barricaded by protesters — by way of a second-floor window earlier than main out folks in handcuffs. They additionally cleared the big tent encampment.
In Los Angeles, fireworks have been hurled as counter-protesters sprayed chemical substances onto the pro-Palestinian encampment and tried to tear down wood boards and metallic barricades earlier than police finally arrived.
On Wednesday, college students on loudspeakers referred to as for demonstrators to maintain going at a camp blocking the doorway to one of many college’s primary libraries, which bore graffiti studying: “Free Gaza.”
And college students at Fordham University, a Jesuit establishment additionally in New York, launched their very own campus protest on Wednesday, in accordance with US media.
Elsewhere, police moved in on the University of Wisconsin at Madison and arrested a number of protesters, TV footage confirmed.
Law enforcement in helmets and carrying batons arrived on the University of Texas in Dallas and commenced taking down elements of a scholar encampment there, in accordance with TV photos.
At the University of Arizona, police mentioned they used “chemical irritant munitions” to disperse “an unlawful assembly.”
The Gaza struggle began when Hamas militants staged an unprecedented assault on Israel on October 7 that left round 1,170 folks lifeless, largely civilians, in accordance with an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed greater than 34,500 folks in Gaza, largely girls and youngsters, in accordance with the Hamas-run territory’s well being ministry.
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