The American president also affirmed this Thursday, May 2, to defend “freedom of expression” after the police interventions on Wednesday in American universities in order to dislodge the students who were protesting against the Israeli military operation.
Faced with student anger, police repression. Security forces once again intervened on several American campuses on Wednesday May 1 to dislodge students who are mobilizing, from one end of the United States to the other, to denounce the war waged by Israel in the Gaza Strip and the support provided by Washington.
Police began dismantling barricades set up by pro-Palestinian students at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) early Thursday. The police, equipped with riot gear, removed grilles and wooden planks and several demonstrators were arrested, according to images broadcast by the CNN television channel.
At the University of Texas at Dallas, police dismantled a protest camp and arrested at least 17 people for “criminal trespass”, depending on the establishment. The police also arrested several people at the New York university of Fordham University and evacuated a camp set up in the morning on the campus.
So far silent on the subject, President Joe Biden spoke this Thursday, May 2 to affirm that he defends the “freedom of expression” and that the United States “are not an authoritarian country that silences people”, the 81-year-old Democrat nevertheless recalls that “order must prevail”. And to warn: “anti-Semitism has no place” in universities.
Operations which follow a police intervention that occurred during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday against students barricaded in the prestigious New York University of Columbia, where the mobilization started. “They arrested people randomly, (…) several students were injured to the point that they had to be hospitalized“, denounced a coalition of Columbia student groups mobilized against the war in an Instagram post.
“I regret that we came to this», Reacted Wednesday Minouche Shafik, the president of the university. The recent “acts of destruction» led by “students and external activists» led her to resort to the police, she affirmed, denouncing also “anti-Semitic remarks» uttered during these gatherings. According to New York Mayor Eric Adams, 300 demonstrators were arrested in recent hours at Columbia and another university site in the city.
Agreement between facilitators and demonstrators
Other encampments were also dismantled early Wednesday on the campuses of the University of Arizona in Tucson and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the southwest and north of the country, respectively, according to local media. . In total, according to an AFP count, the police have carried out arrests on at least 30 university sites since April 17.
In this context, Brown University in the state of Rhode Island stood out by announcing that it had reached an agreement with the demonstrators. This provides for the dismantling of their camp in exchange for a vote by the university in October on a possible “divestment” of “companies enabling and profiting from the genocide in Gaza“.
Images of riot police intervening on campus have gone around the world and are causing strong reactions in the political world, six months before the presidential election. The White House on Wednesday condemned a “small percentage of students who cause disorder“. “Students have the right to go to class and feel safe», Declared Karine Jean-Pierre, spokesperson for the executive, adding: “We will continue to emphasize the need to denounce anti-Semitism.”
During a rally in Wisconsin, former President Donald Trump considered that “New York was under siege last night“. And to be outraged: President Joe Biden “should speak out”. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since October 7, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog denounced Thursday the “terrifying resurgence of anti-Semitism” around the world, and particularly in the United States, where “renowned universities, centers of history, culture and education” would according to him “contaminated by hatred and anti-Semitism”.
Update : at 1:10 p.m. with UCLA; then at 2:13 p.m. with the statement of Isaac Herzog; at 5:15 p.m. with Joe Biden expected to speak.