Police arrest pro-Palestine protesters on University of Georgia campus
ATHENS, Ga. - University of Georgia police and Georgia State Patrol troopers arrested multiple demonstrators during a pro-Palestine protest at the Athens campus on Monday morning.
The protesters, part of a group Students for Justice of Palestine, set up an encampment on the Old College Front Lawn at the university's North Campus around 7 a.m. Monday.
According to a statement from the group, they set up the encampment to "demand university solidarity, protection, and the disclosure and divestment of financial relationships with zionist organizations."
"Our universities have chosen profit over the lives of the Palestinian people and the overwhelming force of student opinion. Our administrators are more concerned with maintaining their prestigious reputations than the Israeli occupation’s ongoing slaughter of Palestinians," the group wrote. "Their supposed power is nothing compared to the united strength of students, faculty, and staff committed to realizing justice and upholding Palestinian liberation on campus."
Around two dozen protesters were part of the encampment and refused to follow orders from campus police to remove their tents and leave the area.
According to a statement from University of Georgia spokesman Greg Trevor, the protesters "were advised repeatedly, for more than an hour, that the tents and barricades they had put in place had to be removed and that they must comply with applicable policies."
"They were also given the opportunity by Student Affairs personnel to make a reservation and relocate to one of our centrally designated forums, but they refused," Trevor wrote. "After multiple warnings that they would be arrested for trespass if they did not comply with our policies, at 8:30 a.m., UGA Police were left with no choice but to arrest those who refused to comply."
It is not clear how many protesters were arrested, how many were students, or what charges they may be facing.
The school says any students, faculty, or staff members who are arrested could also face disciplinary action.
"Let us make it abundantly clear that while the University of Georgia staunchly supports freedom of expression, we will not cede control of our campus to groups that refuse to abide by University policy and threaten the safety of those who live, work and study here," Trevor said. "The University of Georgia remains an institution where ideas, viewpoints, and scholarship can be openly expressed and debated."
Anti-war college protests: Conflicting opinions on UGA campus
"I believe the Palestinians have a right to exist, and the school is complicit in the genocide and I don’t align with that," said a pro-Palestinian student protester who asked to remain anonymous.
Student protesters like this one are calling on their schools to cut financial ties with Israel to put an end to the war as the Palestinian death toll mounts and the humanitarian crisis worsens in Gaza.
Not every student agrees this is the right way to go.
"This is not genocide, this is self-defense," said Stephen Sulimani.
He told FOX 5 he believed Israel had the right to defend itself in response to the brutal Hamas attack back in October.
"You killed civilians, women, children," he said. "This is self-defense."
He went a step further, saying some of the messaging from students during these college protests had come off as anti-Jewish.
"I think there’s antisemitism here even if those saying it don’t realize it," he explained.
FOX 5 reporter Christopher King asked the anonymous pro-Palestinian protester whether they agreed.
"Absolutely not," the student said. "We are [a] multi-faith, multi-ethnic group out here. We have many Jewish comrades."
Similar protests in metro Atlanta
The demonstration follows similar protests at college campuses around the country, including one at Emory University.
Last Thursday, Georgia State Patrol troopers and Atlanta police officers used tear gas, Tasers, and other means to dismantle a camp in the school's quadrangle.
School officials said 20 of the 28 people arrested were "Emory community members."
Video circulated widely on social media shows two women who identified themselves as professors being detained, with one of them slammed to the ground by one officer as a second officer then pushes her chest and face onto a concrete sidewalk. In a separate incident Thursday evening, some protesters pinned police officers against the glass doors of the Candler School of Theology on the campus and threw objects at the officers, Emory’s president said.
The police response led to responses from across the country and more protesters returning to the area on Friday and over the weekend.