The pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University in New York are escalating. The New Yorkers police broke into the university’s Hamilton Hall on Tuesday evening to evict activists who had occupied the building, television images showed. “We’re evacuating the building,” police officers from a riot squad shouted as they advanced toward the barricaded entrance to the building.
According to a reporter from the dpa news agency, hundreds of police officers flocked to the campus in northern Manhattan. According to US broadcaster CBS, there were at least 50 arrests. Dozens of tents in the so-called solidarity camp on the site were searched by the emergency services. “Shame! Shame!” shouted many students standing outside on campus.
The occupation began that night when protesters broke windows, entered the building and unfurled a banner reading “Hind’s Hall,” symbolically naming the building after a six-year-old Palestinian child who died in the Gaza Strip was killed by the Israeli military. Outside the eight-story neoclassical building, protesters blocked the entrance with tables, folded their arms in a human barricade and chanted pro-Palestinian slogans.
At a news conference the evening before police arrived, Mayor Eric Adams and law enforcement officials said the Hamilton Hall occupation was instigated by “outside agitators” unaffiliated with Columbia and known to law enforcement. Police based their conclusions in part on the occupiers’ escalating behavior, which included vandalism, erecting barricades to block entrances, and destroying security cameras. Adams suggested that some of the protesting students were not fully aware of the “external actors” in their midst. One of the leaders of the protests, Palestinian student Mahmoud Khalil, disputed claims that outsiders initiated the occupation. “They are students,” he told Reuters.
The situation at the Columbia University joins a wave of Gaza-related protests at other US universities. Demonstrations against the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians have roiled the university landscape and divided the public in recent weeks. Pro-Palestinian groups have called on universities to stop investing in companies that support or profit from Israel’s military actions in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University in New York are escalating. The New Yorkers police broke into the university’s Hamilton Hall on Tuesday evening to evict activists who had occupied the building, television images showed. “We’re evacuating the building,” police officers from a riot squad shouted as they advanced toward the barricaded entrance to the building.
According to a reporter from the dpa news agency, hundreds of police officers flocked to the campus in northern Manhattan. According to US broadcaster CBS, there were at least 50 arrests. Dozens of tents in the so-called solidarity camp on the site were searched by the emergency services. “Shame! Shame!” shouted many students standing outside on campus.