Tag Archives: encampment

Police removed pro-Palestinian encampment at DePaul University but protests continued

Police-Clear-DePaul-encampment

Important Takeaways:

  • It was just after 5:30 a.m. when chaos and confusion swept through the encampment. A student who filmed the raid by the Chicago Police Department provided the footage to CBS 2. Students tried to block the officers’ entry, but the officers pushed through.
  • DePaul University President Robert Manuel gave law enforcement the green light Wednesday night, after deeming the situation on campus “unsafe.”
  • After the raid, students quickly regrouped, taking their movement across the street to a gas station.
  • DePaul also reported more than 1,000 complaints altogether, including more than 625 registered complaints from neighbors and community members, and more than 425 from students, faculty and staff, and parents.
  • These complaints included one death threat, four credible threats of violence, 12 incidents of criminal property damage, and 34 reports of antisemitism, among other issues raised.
  • DePaul also outlined numerous complaints of harassment at the encampment and of Jewish community members feeling unsafe.
  • “You know, the day that the encampment went up, one of the first signs that went up said, ‘Jewish safety cannot be guaranteed until Palestine is free’

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Police begin removing protesters from Dakota pipeline encampment

Protesters demonstrate against the Energy Transfer Partners' Dakota Access oil pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, in Los Angeles, California

(Reuters) – Police in North Dakota began clearing a group of Native American and environmental protesters from an encampment near an oil pipeline construction site on Thursday in a move that could escalate tensions in a standoff that has lasted several months.

The police moved in on the protesters camped on private property near the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, near the town of Cannon Ball, at around 11:15 a.m. (1715 GMT), according to a statement from the Morton County Sheriff Department.

Police also were removing roadblocks set up by the demonstrators.

“Protesters’ escalated unlawful behavior this weekend by setting up illegal roadblocks, trespassing onto private property and establishing an encampment has forced law enforcement to respond at this time,” Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, said in the statement.

The 1,172-mile (1,886-km) pipeline, which is being built by a group of companies led by Energy Transfer Partners LP, would offer the fastest and most direct route to bring Bakken shale oil from North Dakota to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries.

Supporters say it would also be safer and more cost-effective than transporting the oil by road or rail.

But the pipeline has drawn the ire of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and environmental activists who say it threatens the water supply and historical tribal sacred sites. They have been protesting for several months, and dozens have been arrested.

On Monday, Native American protesters occupied privately owned land in the path of the proposed pipeline, claiming they were the land’s rightful owners under an 1851 treaty with the U.S. government.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has also temporarily banned aircraft from flying over the area affected by the protests. The restriction, issued on Wednesday, bars any aircraft other than those belonging to law enforcement from flying within a radius of four nautical miles of Cannon Ball.

The town, located about 50 miles (80 km) south of the state capital Bismarck, is near a site where a section of the Dakota Access pipeline would be buried underneath the Missouri River.

The FAA restriction is effective until Nov. 5 because of unspecified “hazards.”

A spokesman for the FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson and actor Mark Ruffalo this week joined the demonstrations, which have already drawn considerable celebrity support.

(Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Editing by Tom Brown and Paul Simao)