Instagram permanently bans account of Columbia University’s Students for Justice in Palestine
American photo and video sharing social networking service Instagram has banned the account of Columbia University’s Students for Justice in Palestine, in yet another form of censorship by the US-based technology conglomerate Meta Platforms.
“As the school year is just about to begin, Columbia SJP has been permanently banned from Instagram,” the Columbia University’s student group said in a post on social media platform X on Monday.
“Our account was permanently deleted at 124k followers at the same time as our backup account, and when we made a new page it was deleted within 2 days,” it added.
The blocking of the group’s account was the latest in a battle on Columbia’s campus, and on campuses across the US, over free speech and Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
The Columbia University in New York City was the cradle of pro-Palestine demonstrations in US campuses.
Columbia University’s president has resigned after facing extensive criticism regarding her management of pro-Palestinian protests on campus,.
The protests began on April 17 and spread across other campuses in the US in a student movement unlike any other this century.
The protesters, who demanded an end to the US-backed war which has so far killed 40,476 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 93,647 others, were met with brutal police violence.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Tel Aviv has also blocked water, food, and electricity to Gaza, plunging the coastal strip into a humanitarian crisis.
Thousands of Gazans are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.
