Protesting genocide is not a crime: hands off Yunseo Chung!

New York, May 29 — Hundreds rallied in Manhattan’s Foley Square against the Trump regime’s attempt to deport Yunseo Chung. The ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Gestapo wants to kick her out for protesting the genocide in Gaza.

The 21-year-old Columbia University student, who was born in Korea and has lived in the U.S. since she was six, is a permanent resident. The so-called legal proceedings against her are an attack on everyone’s First Amendment right to free speech.

The attempted deportation of Yunseo Chung is part of a government round-up of activists, including fellow Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk.

The deportation hearing against Ms. Chung was being held next to the rally in the same federal courthouse where Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg were framed and sentenced to death. 

The protest was called by Nodutdol for Korean Community Development. Speakers connected the U.S. occupation of Korea with the occupation of Palestine.

Millions of Koreans were killed by the U.S.-instigated Korean War, while hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been killed and starved in Gaza. Nodutdol proclaims, “Korea is one!”

People chanted, “From the river to sea, Palestine will be free!” Chants were accompanied by drums and even a bagpipe. Messages were read from student groups in South Korea.

Among the rally speakers were those from Nodutdol, PAL Awda: the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation, Palestinian Youth Movement, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, Columbia University Apartheid Divestment, CUNY for Palestine and The People’s Forum.

The rally closed with a survivor of the U.S. war against Korea describing how his village was bombed and strafed by U.S. Air Force planes in 1950, injuring him and his sister. He said he remembers that when he thinks of the people of Gaza being bombed and massacred by Israel’s U.S.-made planes, and is determined to fight for a free Palestine.

Hands off Yunseo Chung!