ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Four people were arrested Tuesday as police removed a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Michigan nearly one month after it was established.
Law enforcement confirmed to Local 4 that four people were arrested Tuesday, May 21 as authorities pushed protesting students out of the Diag, a space at the center of the Ann Arbor campus. Neither the sheriff’s office nor the campus police were willing to provide any additional information about who was arrested or why.
The four people arrested had been released as of about 1:30 p.m.
University of Michigan students set up an encampment at the Diag in late April to pressure the college to cut financial ties with Israel amid the Israel-Hamas war. The university is one of several across the U.S. to establish a long-standing protest calling for the institutions to stop supporting Israel and its ongoing war in Gaza.
Protesters were forced to disband the encampment Tuesday morning as shielded officers made their way into the space and pushed them out. Videos shared online showed people retreating as police appeared to spray an irritant, possibly pepper spray, at protesters.
“Multiple students” were injured as police forced the encampment closure and were hospitalized, according to the National Students for Justice in Palestine. Authorities had not yet confirmed that information.
University of Michigan President Santa Ono said the encampment was removed because protesters would not comply with requests made by the university fire marshal, who inspected the site and found fire hazards. Protesters were reportedly asked to stop using open flames, remove external barriers, and stop “overloading power sources,” Ono said in a statement Tuesday.
Ono did say that the university honors the students’ freedom of speech, expression and assembly, but said those rights are “not limitless.” Officials claimed students at the encampment were responsible for some destruction of property, and generally prevented people from accessing the public Diag.
The removal of the encampment came about a week after protesters went to private homes of two University of Michigan regents and left lists of demands, as well as fake, bloody body bags. A spokesperson for the encampment confirmed that the actions were directed by protest leaders as they tried to get the attention of regents who had reportedly been unresponsive to their requests.
University of Michigan regents had made it clear that they don’t intend to cut financial ties with Israel. Protesting students said they intended to stay in their encampment until the university agreed to divest from Israel and the war.
Encampments at other universities, like Rutgers and Brown, came to mutual ends after the institutions negotiated with protesters. At Brown, university leaders agreed to vote on divesting from companies that support Israel in exchange for removing the encampment.
The University of Michigan, however, has made no such deal. President Ono instead said Tuesday that the university will "support multiple opportunities to discuss and debate complicated issues, including the war in the Middle East,” over the next year.
Protesters told Local 4 that the removal of their encampment does not mark the end of their mission.
---> The Israel-Hamas war is testing whether campuses are sacrosanct places for speech and protest
Palestinians in Gaza have been subject to incessant Israeli bombing, displacement, and a lack of food and resources since Oct. 7, 2023. The latest fighting between Israel and Hamas, the group that rules the Gaza territory, was trigged by Hamas’ surprise attack in Israel that October day, in which they took about 250 hostages and killed about 1,200 people, according to the Israeli government.
More than 35,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the fighting began in October, the Gaza Health Ministry reports. Tens of thousands more people have been wounded in Gaza.
Israel still has support from the U.S., its largest ally, plus several other Western countries amid the war -- though that support has slightly waned as the number of civilian casualties continues to rise. In a recent move, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his defense minister, and three Hamas leaders of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and in Israel.