Police enter Columbia University and arrest pro-Palestinian protesters | World

Police enter Columbia University

Large numbers of New York City police officers began entering Columbia University on Tuesday night as dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters remained on campus.

Students occupied Hamilton Hall hours earlier after setting up camp earlier this month. After police forces entered the campus, protesters who resisted ended up being detained.

Shortly before the officers entered the campus, the New York Police Department received a warning from Columbia authorizing the officers to act, a police officer told The Associated Press. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The police used a ladder to access one of the university’s windows. To support the operation, a bus was made available to transport the detained students.

Students returned to setting up tents after police evacuated a camp at the university on April 18 and detained more than 100 people. Students had been protesting on the Manhattan campus since the previous day, opposing Israel’s military action in Gaza and demanding that the school divest from companies that they claim are profiting from the conflict.

After ignoring an ultimatum from management to dismantle the camp, pro-Palestine protesters broke windows and invaded a university building in the early hours of Tuesday (30).

The invasion occurred after the university began suspending students who defied the deadline of an “ultimatum” given by Columbia’s management on Monday (29) and remained camped out in the main campus square. This measure occurred due to the failure of negotiations between the board and the protest leadership to demobilize the protest.

The protest group is part of a wave of demonstrations in favor of Palestine that have taken over major universities in the United States in recent days.

After the invasion in the early hours of Tuesday, Columbia University issued a statement threatening expulsion of these students and saying that the protesters had “chosen to escalate an unsustainable situation.” According to management, its top priority was “restoring safety and order on our campus.”