New York [US], May 9: Police arrested dozens of Columbia University students who seized part of the school's main library on Wednesday in one of the biggest pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus since last year's wave of protests against Israel's war in Gaza.
At least 40 to 50 students, their hands cuffed with plastic zip-ties, were seen being loaded into New York Police Department vans and buses outside Butler Library as NYPD officers swept through the six-story building to round up other protesters who refused to leave.
Police arrived on campus in force at the request of Columbia officials who said the student demonstrators occupying the library's second-floor main reading room were engaged in trespassing.
Videos and photographs on social media showed protesters, most wearing masks, standing on tables, beating drums and unfurling banners saying "Strike For Gaza" and "Liberated Zone" beneath the chandeliers of the Lawrence A. Wein Reading Room.
U.S. President Donald Trump had lashed out at Columbia over pro-Palestinian protests on campus last year, saying they were antisemitic and showed a failure to protect Jewish students.
Student protesters, including some Jewish organizers, counter that Trump and fellow conservative politicians who are strongly pro-Israel are unfairly conflating pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitism.
Columbia's board of trustees has been negotiating with the Trump administration, which announced in March that it had canceled hundreds of millions of dollars of grants to the university for scientific research.
The university has said it has worked to combat antisemitism and other prejudice on its campus while seeking to fend off accusations from civil rights groups that it was giving in to government intrusions on academic freedom.
Columbia University said late on Wednesday that it had requested NYPD assistance "in securing the building," and that two of its public safety officials were hurt in the standoff.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Corporation
