Students from Columbia University in New York, where a pro-Palestinian student movement started in the United States, occupied a building overnight from Monday to Tuesday, defying an ultimatum to stop their movement. For its part, the UN said Tuesday it was “concerned” about police actions on university campuses in the United States. “I am concerned that some measures taken by law enforcement at a range of universities appear to have a disproportionate impact,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk .
“Except by force”
The High Commissioner said he was troubled “by a series of strong measures taken to disperse and dismantle the demonstrations”, stressing that “freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly are fundamental”. Columbia began Monday evening to sanction students refusing to leave, “except by force”, a camp set up for ten days. Overnight, protesters barricaded themselves in the Hamilton building and others surrounded it in a human chain outside, according to a video posted on social media.
“Members of the Columbia community took over Hamilton Hall just after midnight,” the student group Columbia University Apartheid Divest said in a statement. They renamed it “Hind’s Hall” in honor of a six-year-old girl, Hind, killed during the Gaza war. “Taking control of a building is a small risk compared to the daily resistance of Palestinians in Gaza,” the group adds.
“Protect the camp”
“We have begun to (administratively) suspend students, as part of this new step to ensure the safety of our campus,” Columbia vice-president of communications Ben Chang announced to the press Monday evening. After a relatively calm weekend on campus, where a “village” of tents is set up, Columbia president Minouche Shafik launched an ultimatum on Monday expiring at 6:00 p.m. GMT. She urged 200 occupants of an encampment to leave, following the failure of five days of negotiations for an amicable solution.
These pro-Palestinian students and activists demanding that Columbia, a private university, cut ties with patrons or companies linked to Israel, then called to “protect the encampment”. “We will not be dislodged, except by force,” Sueda Polat, a student leader of the movement, shouted at a press briefing. An AFP journalist counted around fifty people remaining Monday evening in the small encampment in a relaxed atmosphere and without police presence.
Columbia assured Friday that it would not call on the New York police to evacuate the tents. But for Columbia professor Joseph Howley, President Shafik’s ultimatum amounts to “yielding to external political pressure.”
Vietnam War
The wave of protest against Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip has been spreading across American universities for ten days. The movement started from Columbia where one hundred people were arrested on April 18. Since then, hundreds of others – students, teachers and activists – have been questioned, sometimes arrested and prosecuted in several universities across the country. Images of riot police intervening on campuses, at the request of universities, have gone around the world, recalling similar events in the United States during the Vietnam War.
The protests have reignited the tense debate since the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, over freedom of expression, a constitutional right and allegations of anti-Semitism. This winter, the two university presidents of Harvard and UPenn had to resign after being accused before Congress in Washington of not doing enough against anti-Semitism. On the one hand, students and teachers accuse their universities of seeking to censor free political expression, on the other several personalities, including Republican elected officials, believe that activists are fueling anti-Semitism. Jewish students have joined the ranks of pro-Palestinian mobilizations.
“No encampment” allowed in Texas
Over the weekend, more than 350 people were arrested at several universities across the country and the Boston encampment was dismantled. At the University of Texas at Austin, a camp was also dismantled and a few people arrested. On Monday, police used pepper spray. “No encampments will be allowed,” conservative Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on social media. Lawyer Paul Quinzi, who defends detained people in Austin, estimated for AFP “the number of arrests” which “continue” is “at least 80”.
At Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond (north-east), police pushed demonstrators out, according to images from local television. Students accused the police of using tear gas. Management said on
The war was triggered by the unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7 on Israeli soil which led to the massacre of 1,170 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli data. In retaliation, Israel promised to destroy the Islamist movement and its vast military operation in the Gaza Strip left 34,535 people dead, mostly civilians, according to Hamas.