evictions and arrests among pro-Gaza –

The police continued the evictions and arrests of students involved in the protests once morest the war in Gaza which have been engulfing around thirty American universities for weeks. US police have dismantled camps set up by demonstrators at the University of Texas and Fordham University in New York, arresting dozens of people, while the situation remains tense at Columbia University, another Big Apple university affected by vehement student demonstrations. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday followingnoon, some students blocked an avenue near the center of the Cambridge campus. Dozens of police cars then patrolled the University of California, Los Angeles, where nighttime clashes occurred following an assault by counter-protesters on a tent city of pro-Palestinian students in which the attackers reportedly used pepper spray. Arrests also occurred at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, while at the University of Arizona police reported they had put an end to an “illegal gathering” with “chemical irritant munitions.”

At Columbia and the City University of New York, where police cleared demonstrators overnight and regarding 300 arrests were made, some students criticized police behavior. «We were attacked, brutally arrested. And I was held for up to six hours before being released,” a Columbia student, identified only as José, told AFP, claiming he was “beaten and trampled” by the officers. Isabel, a medical student who treated detainees following their release, said she had rescued colleagues with “severe head injuries and concussions.” “Someone was knocked unconscious in the police station, someone was thrown down the stairs,” she said. New York Mayor Eric Adams accused “external agitators” of fomenting tensions. Columbia students denied outsider involvement.

Video on this topic

The president of the university, Minouche Shafik, criticized for her decision to turn to the police, expressed “profound sadness”. “I’m sorry that we’ve reached this point,” Shafik said in a statement. The protests have put the president of the United States, Joe Biden, in difficulty, who, despite not having spared criticism of Israel for the excess of civilian victims caused by the offensive in the Strip, ended up in the crosshairs of the demonstrators for supporting Israel .