The New York police intervened manu militari on Tuesday evening April 30 at Columbia University, the epicenter of the pro-Palestinian mobilization on American campuses, in order to dislodge 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 via the South and the Center, recalling the demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the end of the 1960s. In New York Tuesday evening, It was in riot gear, aided by an intervention vehicle with a ladder, that dozens, even hundreds of police officers, entered the campus. Helmeted officers, climbing the ladder, then entered the occupied building through a window.
Dozens of people, some wearing keffiyehs, were arrested and placed in police buses, AFP noted. Outside the campus, crowds shouted “Free Palestine!” “Last night’s events on campus gave us no choice,” wrote university president Minouche Shafik in a publicly released letter asking the New York Police Department to intervene at the perimeter of the campus. this private establishment in Manhattan.
Until May 17
For two weeks, she and many other university leaders across the country have faced protesters, sometimes just a few dozen, who have occupied 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, in order to maintain order and ensure that no encampments is established.” The graduation ceremony is scheduled for May 15.
During 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 honor of a six-year-old girl killed in Gaza. On their Instagram account, this group denounced an “invasion” of the campus. The presidency of Columbia began on Monday to administratively “suspend” students who refused to leave the “village” of tents.
“Chaos”
Six months before the presidential election in a polarized country, this student movement has provoked a strong reaction from the political world. Joe Biden “must do something” against these “paid agitators,” Republican candidate Donald Trump said Tuesday evening on Fox News. “We must put an end to the anti-Semitism that plagues our country today,” he added. “While Columbia University is plunged into chaos, Joe Biden is absent because he is afraid to tackle the subject,” Republican leader of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson wrote on X in the evening. It has long called for the departure of its president, Minouche Shafik. “Occupying a university building by force is the wrong approach” and does not represent “an example of peaceful demonstration,” John Kirby, spokesperson for Democratic President Joe Biden’s National Security Council, thundered before the police intervention. .
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators are demanding that their universities cut ties with patrons or companies linked to Israel. Columbia refuses. But another elite Northeast campus, Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, announced a deal with students: dismantling the encampment in exchange for a university vote in October on possible “corporate divestments.” who enable and profit from the genocide in Gaza+.