New York City police officers surged onto Columbia University’s campus late on Tuesday, breaking up an escalating protest and arresting pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had barricaded themselves in a building.
Live television broadcasts showed officers entering Hamilton Hall, the latest focal point of the protest, which had been occupied by demonstrators early on Tuesday. Dozens of people have been detained and loaded into buses, CNN reported.
Columbia president Minouche Shafik said she asked police to clear all protest encampments and maintain a campus presence through at least May 17.
Photo: EPA-EFE
At about 11:40pm, Columbia personnel took down tents and removed supplies from the main encampment, the Columbia Daily Spectator reported.
The police action capped two weeks of rising tensions at Columbia, punctuated by more than 100 arrests on April 18 and subsequent protests that culminated with the takeover of Hamilton Hall. The activists have condemned the Israeli military campaign in Gaza that the Hamas-run health ministry says has left more than 34,000 people dead, and are calling for the university to divest from companies that are supplying weapons to Israel.
The earlier clash on the school’s New York City campus helped inspire protests at other colleges in the country, sparking recriminations and drawing in everyone from students to faculty and billionaire donors to politicians.
Columbia in a statement late on Tuesday said that the New York Police Department (NYPD) was brought in shortly after 9pm to restore order and ensure the safety of the campus community.
“After the university learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized, and blockaded, we were left with no choice,” a spokesman for the school said. “Columbia public safety personnel were forced out of the building, and a member of our facilities team was threatened. We will not risk the safety of our community or the potential for further escalation.”
In a letter to Michael Gerber, NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters, Shafik asked the police to clear all individuals not just from Hamilton Hall but also from campus encampments.
She also requested a police presence on campus through at least May 17 to “maintain order and ensure encampments are not re-established.”
The university’s commencement is scheduled for May 15.
In the letter, Shafik said that the decision to call on the police was made with the support of the university’s trustees after determining “that the building occupation, the encampments, and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to persons, property, and the substantial functioning of the university.”
Farther uptown, police made arrests outside City College of New York, dispersing protesters and erecting steel barricades in the area.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS