💧 The Abduction of Rümeysa Öztürk

[This is wrong on so many levels.]
99.999% of the time, there’s no monsters in the streets. But not 100% of the time. On Tuesday evening, federal authorities abducted Tufts PhD student Rümeysa Öztürk off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. A neighbor’s security camera caught it on video, and it’s horrifying.1 Sickening though it is, I urge you to watch it (with audio), because we should all bear witness to this disgrace.

It’s chilling to witness six people without uniforms descend upon a lone student, pulling masks over their faces as they seize her.2 Öztürk must have feared this was a kidnapping rather than an arrest. An unidentified voice certainly does, stating that those involved don’t look like the police and repeatedly asking why they’re hiding their faces. As Öztürk is eventually handcuffed and loaded into an unmarked SUV, she is rightly terrified.

We all should be. This shouldn’t happen anywhere, but it certainly shouldn’t happen on an American street. This atrocity has hit especially close to home for me. I went to college at Tufts University and I’ve lived in Somerville. In fact, I spent a good deal of time in a house no more than 100 feet from the spot where Öztürk was snatched up. Knowing I’ve walked down the very same sidewalk is especially devastating.

A Boston Globe piece (unfortunately paywalled) extensively quotes a neighbor named Joe Ferraro:

“I don’t care what she was doing,” Ferraro continued. “You can’t just nab people off the sidewalk and throw them in a car and take them away, and expect anyone who’s seen it to be alright afterwards.”

The sudden arrest has shattered the sense of calm on the residential street. After seeing the footage of plainclothes ICE agents emerging from their unmarked cars, Ferraro said he is now on edge for anyone loitering in the area.

I share Ferraro’s dismay. As to what Öztürk was doing, thus far, her arrest appears to have been as unwarranted as it was cruel. The government stated that they cancelled her student visa, but they have provided no concrete reasons as to why. When asked about it, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke vaguely and irrelevantly about “lunatics” who “create a ruckus”. That does not apply to Öztürk.

As best as anyone can tell, Öztürk was targeted because she co-authored an op-ed that criticized Tufts University’s response to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Masked and non-uniformed federal agents snatched a doctoral student off the street and tossed her in an unmarked vehicle for something she wrote in a college newspaper a year earlier. That’s a despicable attack on the freedom of speech within America.

Things in this country are bad and they’re getting worse. I’m dismayed by what has happened in recent months and truly frightened about what will follow. But I am also heartened by the groundswell of support for Öztürk, from the aforementioned unidentified voice of resistance to protests thousands strong which quickly sprang up around Boston.

While I don’t know exactly how we can combat this wrong, I am certain that speaking up, and speaking out, is the right move for everyone. Back to Joe Ferraro:

“Part of me is afraid to talk about it,” [Ferraro] said. “But come pluck me off the sidewalk then, if that’s what you get for talking about it.”

Come pluck me off the sidewalk then, too.

Footnotes:

That video is archived here. ↩︎

These agents work for the same administration that is demanding a ban on mask-wearing by peaceful protestors. ↩︎