NEW YORK, (PIC)
US police in New York and Virginia stormed universities and arrested hundreds of university students who have been launching pro-Palestine protests, sweeping the US universities in rejection of the ongoing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.
New York police stormed the Columbia University campus and arrested hundreds of students who showed solidarity with Palestine.
The American Association of University Professors, Columbia University branch, said that the university’s administration bears the responsibility for what might happen.
The pro-Palestine student movement, which has reached dozens of US universities, demands an end to the Israeli war on Gaza and an economic and academic boycott of Israel.
The police dispersed protesters and journalists from the vicinity of Hamilton Hall in Columbia University, where students and professors were protesting to demand an end to the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip.
Columbia University President Nemat Shafiq asked New York Police to remain on campus until May 17 to ensure no more sit-in tents are erected.
For his part, the US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said, “those causing insecurity on university campuses will not be tolerated,” in a blatant expression of US double standards about the concept of freedom.
In a related context, the University of North Carolina announced the arrest of 36 protesters in an on-campus sit-in, demanding an end to the Israeli war on Gaza.
At Virginia Commonwealth University, US police dispersed on Tuesday a sit-in in solidarity with Gaza and arrested 13 protesters, including 6 students, during on-campus protests against the Israeli aggression on the Strip.
US police charged the detainees with illegal assembly and trespassing, the university explained in a statement.
On Tuesday morning, Virginia Governor Winsome Earle Sears wrote in a post on X, “Once the situation calms down, I think we will see that this was not a fully peaceful protest. The assembly violated many university policies”, she added.
About 1,200 university students have so far been arrested from universities across the United States, according to the Washington Post.
Al-Jazeera quoted student sources as saying that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) administration warned that it would disperse a sit-in protest within 24 hours as security forces have encircled the student protest square amid concerns over forced dispersing of the sit-in by the police.
MIT President Sally Kornbluth called for ending student sit-ins, saying in a video message that threats of violence and violations of laws are unacceptable, warning that this will be met with disciplinary sanctions.
The University of California also announced that it had taken measures to increase law enforcement personnel on campus due to the quarrels, amid the continuing pro-Gaza student movement, pledging to take “severe disciplinary measures, including expulsion or suspension, if students are obstructed from their classes.”
Meanwhile, United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Volker Turk said he was disturbed by the harsh measures taken by US security forces during attempts to disperse pro-Palestinian protests at US universities.
In a press statement, Turk stressed that legitimate practices of freedom of expression cannot be confused with incitement to violence and hatred, as he put it.
In the first agreement of its kind, Brown University announced on Tuesday that it had reached an agreement with a group of its students who are standing against the war in Gaza, stipulating that the protesting students would remove their camp from the campus in exchange for a promise that the university would reconsider its relations with companies linked to Israel.
During the past two weeks, the pro-Palestine student protests spread to universities across the United States, from California in the west (University of California-Los Angeles, University of Southern California…) to the northeastern states (Columbia, Yale, Harvard, Eupen), and to central and southern states such as Texas and Arizona.
On April 18, students rejecting the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip began a sit-in on Columbia University in New York, demanding halting academic cooperation with Israeli universities and withdrawing its investments in companies that support the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.
As police intervened and dozens of students were arrested, the anger spread to dozens of other universities in the United States, including leading universities such as Harvard, George Washington, New York, Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and North Carolina.
The unprecedented pro-Palestine student movement in the United States has expanded to universities in other countries such as France, Britain, Germany, Canada, and India, all of which witnessed demonstrations in support of their counterparts in American universities, demanding to enforce a ceasefire and boycott companies that supply the Israeli occupation army with weapons.
