NEW YORK: A serious human rights issue is emerging in the US after a huge police posse entered Columbia University in New York on Tuesday night and arrested dozens of pro-Palestine youngsters while bludgeoning some of them in the process.
This police action was the latest undertaken at several US university campuses over the last fortnight to demand that their alma maters stop doing business with Israel which is responsible for over 30,000 civilian deaths in Gaza.
Videos showed sympathetic professors being handcuffed like criminals and roughly shoved into police vans. Several students, including of Indian origin, have been handcuffed, arrested and expelled from the campuses. Nearly 4,000 kms away on Tuesday night as well, pro-Palestinian students at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), were set upon by a mob of 100 vigilantes who then kicked and wielded sticks and baseball bats at each other. The police subsequently entered the campus to quell the violence.
In New York City, videos showed a massive phalanx of armed policemen clearing a tent encampment and climbing up to enter a Columbia University building through a second-floor window to cow down the protesters. The building in question – Hamilton Hall – was stormed by the police exactly 56 years back to clear it of students protesting racism and the Vietnam War.
In close proximity to Columbia, civility prevailed for a while as demonstrators engaged in a peaceful confrontation with the police at the main gate of The City College of New York. But they too were set upon with dozens of arrests.
At Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, police forcibly cleared an encampment also late on Tuesday and arrested about 20 people. Brown University, however, saw a peaceful resolution. Protesters agreed to shut down their encampment after administrators agreed on a vote in October. One student Sophie told The Guardian, “It will not be forgotten. This is no longer an Israel-Palestine issue. It’s a human rights and free speech and a Columbia student issue.”