A woman taking part in this week’s protest at Columbia University against China’s COVID lockdown was repeatedly punched in the head and knocked unconscious, police say.
The 21-year-old victim was demonstrating with other people on West 116th Street just before 8 p.m. Monday when a man she didn’t know approached her and punched her multiple times in the head, causing her to pass out, cops said.
The attacker then fled on foot in an unknown direction, according to police.
The victim was taken to St. Luke’s Hospital in stable condition.
The NYPD on Thursday released a photo of the suspect, asking the public to help identify him.
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About 200 people took part in the rally in front of Columbia’s Low Library, holding up signs, lighting candles and chanting, “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
The gathering at Columbia was one of several such recent protests that took place on college campuses across the US in a show of solidarity with the people of China who have called for President Xi Jinping to step down over his government’s draconian COVID restrictions.
Hundreds of people also gathered Tuesday at Harvard University and near Chinese consulates in New York City and Chicago, chanting in Chinese and English, “We are not slaves, we are citizens!” and “We don’t want dictatorships, we want elections.”
Chinese authorities’ extreme “zero-COVID” policy has led to demonstrations in at least eight mainland cities and Hong Kong. The rallies have been called the most widespread protests since the 1989 student-led Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.
