Pro-Palestinian protests at universities across the US have turned violent amid face-offs with police and pro-Israel groups this week.
ADVERTISEMENTUS President Joe Biden has said «dissent must never lead to disorder» after police dismantled a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) on Thursday.
Authorities began taking down the barricades at UCLA after hundreds of protesters defied orders to leave.
Some people were detained, their hands bound with zip ties.
A crowd of more than 1,000 supporters gathered on campus, both inside a barricaded tent encampment and outside it. Protestors and police scuffled as officers encountered resistance.
Under hovering police helicopters protesters chanted “Where were you last night?” at the officers, referring to Tuesday night local time, when counterprotesters attacked the pro-Palestine encampment and campus security and police took hours to respond.
Protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses in the United States.
Ensuing police crackdowns have echoed actions decades ago against a much larger protest movement protesting the Vietnam War, attracting worldwide attention.
In the Middle East, Iranian state television broadcast images of the police action at UCLA, as did Qatar’s Al Jazeera satellite network. Live images from Los Angeles also played across Israeli television networks.
California Highway Patrol officers poured into the campus by the hundreds early Thursday, wearing face shields and protective vests, and began methodically ripping apart the encampment’s barricade of plywood, pallets, metal fences and trash dumpsters. They also pulled down tents.
The law enforcement presence contrasted with the scene that unfolded Tuesday night before, when a pro-Israeli group attacked the encampment, throwing traffic cones, releasing pepper spray and tearing down barriers.
Fighting continued for several hours before police stepped in, though no arrests were made.
At least 15 protesters suffered injuries, and the tepid response by authorities drew criticism from political leaders as well as Muslim students and advocacy groups.
Protests at other campuses escalate
Elsewhere, police in New Hampshire said they made 90 arrests and took down tents at Dartmouth College.
Officers in Oregon came onto the campus at Portland State University as school officials sought to end the occupation of the library that started Monday.
New York police burst into a building occupied by war protesters at Columbia University on Tuesday night, breaking up a demonstration that had paralyzed the school.
At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a scrum broke out early Wednesday after police with shields removed all but one tent and shoved protesters. Four officers were injured, including a state trooper who was hit in the head with a skateboard, authorities said.
Four were charged with battering law enforcement.
At Brown University in Rhode Island, administrators agreed to consider a vote to divest from Israel in October – reportedly, the first US college to agree to such a demand.
ADVERTISEMENTIn rare instances, university officials and protest leaders struck agreements to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.
The nationwide campus demonstrations began at Columbia on 17 April to protest Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which followed Hamas launching a deadly attack on southern Israel on 7 October.
Militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages.
Vowing to stamp out Hamas, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to health authorities.
