Professors at the University of Puerto Rico have called a 24-hour strike in support of student activists who have been subjected to harsh discipline by university officials and police.

Students at UPR have been engaging in actions for a year in opposition to tuition hikes, and the university has moved in recent months to squelch the protests. This week a judge lifted a ban on demonstrations on campus and re-instated a suspended student leader, but new clashes with police followed. Yesterday police “indiscriminately” beat activists with batons in an incident that ended in 21 student arrests.

More info and photos at the Occupy CA blog.

Update | In a strongly-worded editorial, the Puerto Rico Daily Sun is calling on Puerto Rico’s governor to end the police occupation of the UPR campus. Key quote:

The latest events at the University of Puerto Rico have made evident, even to the most conservative, that the administration’s heavy-handed policy towards the students is abusive, ineffective and plainly wrong.
The indiscriminate aggression of police riot squads against students, who are exercising their constitutional rights in public areas without interfering with any academic or administrative activity, is a gross violation of their rights and an act  comparable only to the acts of the dictatorships we all denounce and reject.