Pro-Palestinian demonstrations | An occupied building at Columbia University

(New York) Pro-Palestinian demonstrations on American campuses escalated again on Tuesday with the overnight occupation of a building at Columbia University in New York by students and activists.

Joe Biden, through a spokesperson, criticized this occupation in the university from which the wave that has been shaking American campuses for more than two weeks started.

The American president “thinks that occupying a university building by force is the wrong approach” and is “not an example of peaceful demonstration”, expressed John Kirby, spokesperson for the National Security Council, an organ attached to the White House.

The Republican opposition in Congress, led by the President of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, had denounced the day before a university “overtaken by anti-Semitism” and urged its president Minouche Shafik to resign.

At Columbia, after the failure of negotiations to evacuate a camp set up since mid-April, the management of this prestigious university took sanctions Monday evening by administratively “suspending” students.

Protesters then barricaded themselves during the night in a building that others protected using a human chain outside, sanitary masks on their faces and keffiyehs on their heads according to images on social networks.

The Columbia University Apartheid Divest group renamed the building, Hamilton Hall, to “Hind’s Hall” in honor of a six-year-old girl killed during the Gaza war.

Closed access

Access to the huge campus, located in Manhattan and usually free to the general public, was closed on Tuesday and controlled by law enforcement, noted an AFP journalist.

After a relatively calm weekend in the Columbia tent “village” which sheltered up to 200 people, the president issued an ultimatum expiring Monday noon.

Dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators demand that this very famous private establishment cut ties with patrons or companies linked to Israel.

Columbia refused but assured that it would no longer send the New York police to evacuate the premises.

Because images of American law enforcement in riot gear sometimes brutally intervening on campuses have gone around the world. Hundreds of people – students, teachers, activists – were questioned, some arrested and prosecuted.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said on Tuesday he was “concerned” about the “disproportionate impact” of “certain measures taken by the police” to “disperse and dismantle » demonstrations and encampments at universities.

” Restore order ”

The police intervened Monday at the University of Texas at Austin (south), unceremoniously, because “no encampment will be authorized,” insisted Republican Governor Greg Abbott.

In California, the police “evacuated and secured” two buildings at Cal Poly Humboldt University during the night from Monday to Tuesday and arrested 35 people, according to this establishment which specified that these actions aimed to “restore order” .

These new pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the United States have revived the tense debate since the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7 between freedom of expression and accusations of anti-Semitism.

This winter, the two university presidents of Harvard and UPenn had to resign after being accused before Congress of not doing enough against anti-Semitism.

The United States has the largest number of Jews in the world after Israel, and millions of Arab-Muslim Americans.

Many Jewish students have also joined the ranks of pro-Palestinian anger, denouncing a “genocide” in Gaza.

The war in the Gaza Strip was triggered by the unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7 on Israeli soil which led to the massacre of 1,170 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP report based on official data. Israelis. In retaliation, Israel promised to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement and its vast military operation in Gaza left 34,535 people dead, mostly civilians, according to Hamas.