Gaza war protests: Students, police clash on US campuses
Nearly 550 arrests have been made across US universities in relation to protests over war in Gaza
NEW YORK: Renewed clashes between police and students opposed to Israel’s war in Gaza broke out on Thursday, raising questions about forceful methods being used to shut down protests that have intensified since mass arrests at Columbia University last week.
Over the past two days, law enforcement at the behest of college administrators have deployed Tasers and tear gas against students protesters at Atlanta’s Emory University, activists say, while officers clad in riot gear and mounted on horseback have swept away demonstrations at the University of Texas in Austin.
Prosecutors on Thursday dropped charges against 46 of the 60 people taken into custody at the University of Texas, citing “deficiencies in the probable cause affidavits”.
Overall, nearly 550 arrests have been made in the last week across major US universities in relation to protests over Gaza, according to a Reuters tally. University authorities have said the demonstrations are often unauthorised and called on police to clear them.
At Emory, police detained 28 people on its Atlanta campus, the university said, after protesters began erecting a tent encampment in an attempt to emulate a symbol of vigilance employed by protesters at Columbia and elsewhere.
The local chapter of the activist group Jewish Voice for Peace said officers used tear gas and Tasers to dispense the demonstration and take some protesters into custody. Atlanta police acknowledged using “chemical irritants” but denied using rubber bullets.
Similar scenarios unfolded on the New Jersey campus of Princeton University where officers swarmed a newly formed encampment, video footage on social media showed.
Boston police earlier forcibly removed a pro-Palestinian encampment set up by Emerson College, arresting more than 100 people, media accounts and police said. At the University of Southern California, where 93 people were arrested at the Los Angeles campus on Wednesday, administrators cancelled the main May 10 graduation ceremony, saying newly required security measures would have placed excessive delays on crowd control.
Ex-prez Trump condemns pro-Palestinian protests Donald Trump on Thursday condemned pro-Palestinian protests sweeping US colleges, saying the level of “hate” on display was far worse than during an infamous, deadly rally by right-wing extremists in Charlottesville in 2017. “We’re having protests all over,” Trump told reporters as he left the Manhattan courtroom where he is standing trial on charges of falsifying business records. “Charlottesville was a little peanut, and it was nothing compared — and the hate wasn’t the kind of hate that you have here, this is tremendous hate,” he said.
The “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, brought torch-bearing white nationalists together from all over the country.
It culminated in an avowed white supremacist driving a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one woman and injuring 19 other people.