Students of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) considered this Thursday that the public institution did not make the necessary efforts to protect its students after early Thursday morning the police violently broke into the camp that pro-Palestinian protesters were carrying out on campus facilities.
“It was difficult to see the same faces of my classmates being beaten, and it is very difficult to see that a school that boasts of being the number one public university has these types of problems, don’t protect your students and allow these types of situations to happen,” Lauren, a first-year student at UCLA, told Efe.
After a tumultuous night that left a balance of at least 200 protesters arrestedmembers of the university’s facilities unit began cleaning the camp that pro-Palestinian students had set up in front of the Powell library and which was attacked several times by groups opposed to the concentration before the violent eviction.
“We don’t know what they are going to do with all this,” one of the workers who had been working since 7:30 local time told Efe. taking down tentsbagging blankets, instruments, flags, toilet paper and other belongings of the protesters.
During the early hours of Thursday, dozens of Los Angeles Police (LAPD) officers confronted the students organized to dismantle the camp with the use of flares, fire extinguishers and shooting rubber bullets at protesters.
Pro-Palestinian protests at American universities have spread throughout the country since last week with the protesters’ request that they stop doing business with Israel or with companies that support the war in Gaza.
According to what a student at the American Film Institute who has actively supported the protests by UCLA students told Efe, the rumor of police intervention to the campus had spread hours before the event, so the students did everything possible to resist the attack.
“There was a large police presence, some snipers had positioned themselves on top of Royce Hall, students and protesters prevented the police enter the camp as much as they couldbut between 6:00 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. it was a battle,” the film student with Jewish and Muslim parents told Efe.
“As a Jew I can’t stand the use of Holocaust history. to justify the slaughter of generations of families for the crime of existing. For me, being Jewish means protesting and resisting Zionism and anyone who defends it,” he elaborated.
The night before, pro-Israel attackers had appeared and had violently attacked the camp and the students, generating the first intervention of the LAPD.
“The entire protest on the part of the students was very peaceful, but when they started to get involved external groups was when everything started to be violent, it was very evident that the pro-Palestinian protesters were students, but on the side of the pro-Israelis There were a lot of older people.“Lauren stated.
After the events, some students who were released from arrest showed up at the library facilities and tearfully reunited with their classmates.
“The school he didn’t do a good job defending students from violence since Tuesday,” said another student who was documenting the cleaning efforts in front of the library.
