Los Angeles: Police removed barricades and began dismantling a pro-Palestinian demonstrators’ fortified encampment early Thursday at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus after hundreds of protesters defied police orders to leave, about 24 hours after counter-protesters attacked a tent encampment on the campus.
The law enforcement action comes after officers spent hours threatening arrests over loudspeakers if people did not disperse. Hundreds of people had gathered on campus, both inside a barricaded tent encampment and outside of it in support.
As police helicopters hovered overhead. The sound of flash-bangs, which produce a bright light and a loud noise to disorient and stun people, could be heard as police moved in, and chants of “Where were you last night” could be heard.
Police methodically ripped apart the encampment’s barricade of plywood, pallets, metal fences and trash dumpsters and made an opening toward dozens of tents of demonstrators. Police also began to pull down canopies and tents.
Demonstrators were holding umbrellas like shields as they faced off with dozens of officers. Some of the protesters warned their fellow demonstrators to be ready with water in case police release tear gas or other irritant.
The police action occurred a night after the UCLA administration and campus police waited hours to stop the counter-protesters’ attack. The delay drew condemnation from Muslim students and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Demonstrators rebuilt the makeshift barriers around their tents Wednesday afternoon while state and campus police watched.
Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses nationwide in a student movement unlike any other this century. The ensuing police crackdowns echoed actions decades ago against a much larger protest movement protesting the Vietnam War.
In the Mideast, Iranian state television carried live images of the police action, as did Qatar’s pan-Arab Al Jazeera satellite network. Live images of Los Angeles also played across Israeli television networks as well.
The tense standoff at UCLA came one night after violence instigated by counter-protesters erupted in the same place.
The law enforcement presence and continued warnings stood in contrast to the scene that unfolded the night before, when counter-demonstrators attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment, throwing traffic cones, releasing pepper spray and tearing down barriers. Fighting continued for several hours before police stepped in, though no arrests were made.
At least 15 protesters suffered injuries, and the tepid response by authorities drew criticism from political leaders as well as Muslim students and advocacy groups.
By Wednesday afternoon a small city sprang up inside the reenforced encampment, now full of hundreds of people and tents on the campus quad. Some protesters said Muslim prayers as the sun set over the campus, while others chanted “we’re not leaving” or passed out goggles and surgical masks.
They wore helmets and headscarves and discussed the best ways to handle pepper spray or tear gas as someone sang over a megaphone.
A few constructed homemade shields out of plywood in case they clashed with police forming skirmish lines elsewhere on the campus. “For rubber bullets, who wants a shield?” a protester called out.
Outside the encampment, a crowd of students, alumni and neighbours gathered on campus steps, joining in pro-Palestinian chants. A group of students holding signs and wearing T-shirts in support of Israel and Jewish people demonstrated nearby.
The crowd continued to grow as the night wore on as more and more officers poured onto campus.
Ray Wiliani, who lives nearby, said he came to UCLA Wednesday evening to support the pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
“We need to take a stand for it,” he said. “Enough is enough.”
Elsewhere, police in New Hampshire said they made 90 arrests and took down tents at Dartmouth College and officers in Oregon came onto the campus at Portland State University as school officials sought to end the occupation of the library that started Monday.
The chaotic scenes at UCLA came after New York police burst into a building occupied by anti-war protesters at Columbia University Tuesday night, breaking up a demonstration that had paralysed the school.
An Associated Press tally counted at least 38 times since April 18 where arrests were made at campus protests across the US More than 1,600 people have been arrested at 30 schools.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said in a statement that “a group of instigators” perpetrated the previous night’s attack, but he did not provide details about the crowd or why the administration and school police did not act sooner.
“However one feels about the encampment, this attack on our students, faculty and community members was utterly unacceptable,” he said. “It has shaken our campus to its core.”
Block promised a review of the night’s events after California Gov. Gavin Newsom denounced the delays.
The head of the University of California system, Michael Drake, ordered an “independent review of the university’s planning, its actions and the response by law enforcement”.
“The community needs to feel the police are protecting them, not enabling others to harm them,” Rebecca Husaini, chief of staff for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said in a news conference on the Los Angeles campus on Wednesday.
Speakers disputed the university’s account that 15 people were injured and one hospitalized, saying the number of people taken to the hospital was higher. One student described needing to go to the hospital after being hit in the head by an object wielded by counter-protesters.
Several students who spoke during the news conference said they had to rely on each other, not the police, for support as they were attacked, and that many in the pro-Palestinian encampment remained peaceful and did not engage with counter-protesters. UCLA cancelled classes Wednesday.
At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a scrum broke out early Wednesday after police with shields removed all but one tent and shoved protesters. Four officers were injured, including a state trooper who was hit in the head with a skateboard, authorities said. Four were charged with battering law enforcement.
This is all playing out in an election year in the US, raising questions about whether young voters — who are critical for Democrats — will back President Joe Biden’s reelection effort, given his staunch support of Israel.
In rare instances, university officials and protest leaders struck agreements to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.
At Brown University in Rhode Island, administrators agreed to consider a vote to divest from Israel in October — apparently, the first US college to agree to such a demand.
The nationwide campus demonstrations began at Columbia April 17 to protest Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which followed Hamas launching a deadly attack on southern Israel October 7.
Militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to stamp out Hamas, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry there.
Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests antisemitic, while Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, organisers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.
Meanwhile, protest encampments elsewhere were cleared by the police, resulting in arrests, or closed up voluntarily at schools across the US, including The City College of New York, Fordham University in New York, Portland State in Oregon, Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona and Tulane University in New Orleans.
AP