2024-05-02 07:53:32
Live video footage showed police in riot gear marching on the campus in upper Manhattan, the epicenter of nationwide student protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. The police used an armored car with a bridge mechanism to gain access to the second floor of the building.
Officials said they used flares to disperse the crowd, but denied using tear gas during the operation.
Officers were soon seen leading handcuffed protesters to police buses waiting outside the university gates. NYPD spokesman Carlos Nieves said there were no immediate reports of injuries after the arrests.
“We’re clearing it,” police shouted as they marched to the barricaded entrance to the building.
“Shame! Shame!” chanted many of the watching students still outside on campus.
One protester at Columbia University, who gave her first name only as Sophie, told The Guardian that police barricaded protesters inside buildings before arresting them. “It will not be forgotten,” she said. – This is no longer an issue of Israel and Palestine. This is a human rights issue, a free speech issue, and an issue for Columbia students.”
The police operation, which was largely over within a couple of hours, followed nearly two weeks of tension after pro-Palestinian university protesters on Monday ignored an ultimatum to leave campus or risk expulsion. On Tuesday, Columbia University officials threatened to expel students who occupied Hamilton Hall, an eight-story neoclassical building blocked by protesters who held hands to form a barricade and chanted pro-Palestinian slogans.
The university said in a statement Tuesday that it had asked police to enter the campus to “restore safety and order to our community.”
It said: “After the university became aware that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, defaced and blocked during the night, we had no choice. Columbia Public Safety personnel were ejected from the building and a member of our facilities team was threatened. We will not risk the safety of our community or the ability to further escalate the situation.”
The university reiterated that the group that “invaded and occupied the building” was led by individuals “not affiliated with the university.”
He added: “The decision to contact the NYPD was made in response to the actions of the protesters, not the cause they are defending.”
New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman said he was “outraged” by the level of police presence at Columbia and other New York universities. He wrote on the social network X: “The militarization of campuses, heavy police presence and the arrest of hundreds of students directly contradicts the role of education as a cornerstone of our democracy.”
Mr. Bowman called on the Columbia administration to stop the “dangerous escalation before it does more damage” and allow faculty to return to campus.
Columbia University President Minouche Shafik asked that police remain until at least May 17 “to maintain order and ensure that the camps are not re-established.” Mr. Shafik previously said that efforts to reach a compromise with the organizers of the protests had failed and that the institution would not give in to demands to sell shares from Israel.
Separately, The New York Times reported dozens of arrests at the City College of New York, part of the City University of New York (CUNY) system, after some students left Columbia University and moved north to an area of campus where a protest sit-in was still taking place.
One protester, who identified himself as OS, told The Guardian: “We must continue to protest peacefully and the truth must come out. This is genocide happening right in front of us, and people in power are allowing it to happen. It’s scary to speak out because so many people are losing their education or getting fired.”
An NYPD official confirmed that CUNY had requested that police enter the campus to disperse the protesters.
The camp at the government college has been going on since Thursday and earlier on Tuesday, students tried to occupy the academic building.
At a news conference Tuesday night, Mayor Eric Adams and city police officials said the Hamilton Hall occupation was sparked by “outside agitators” not affiliated with Columbia University and known to law enforcement to provoke civil unrest.
Adams suggested that some of the protesting students were not entirely aware of the “outside actors” in their midst.
“We cannot and will not allow what should be a peaceful assembly to turn into a violent spectacle with no purpose. We cannot wait for this situation to become more serious. This has to end now,” the mayor said.
Neither Adams nor the university provided concrete evidence to support this claim.
One of the student leaders of the protest, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian scholar studying at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs on a student visa, denied claims that the occupation was initiated by outsiders. “They are students,” he told Reuters.
Hamilton Hall was one of several buildings occupied during 1968. a civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protest on campus. This week, student protesters holding up a large banner reading “Hinda Hall” renamed it in honor of Hinda Rajaba, a six-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza City killed by Israeli forces earlier this year.
Seyma Beyram, a professor of journalism at Columbia, said on the social network X that she and her colleagues from the journalism school were trapped in a block surrounded by police barricades. “All I can capture now are the students being put on one of the buses,” she wrote.
On Tuesday night, Columbia’s student radio station reported that School of Journalism Dean Jelani Cobb had been threatened with arrest if he and others inside the building came outside. “Free, free, free Palestine,” chanted protesters outside the building. Others shouted, “Let the students out!”
When the police moved in, one student said, “We de-escalated the situation, and now the police are leaving. We are proud to stand for something. We just want to say that we are not happy that university tuition fees are being used to fund wars, and we want to know what we can do about it, but without violence.”
2024-05-02 07:53:32