People in cities around the world have marched in solidarity with demonstrators in the US, as politicians and public figures united to condemn the killing of George Floyd.
Floyd, an unarmed black man, died on Monday last week in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed a knee into his neck for nine minutes while Floyd repeatedly complained that he could not breathe.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday told Sydney Radio 2GB that the scenes in the US were “terribly disturbing, shocking” and “made [him] cringe.”
Photo: AP
Saying Australia was “fair,” he applauded police and other emergency workers, and pleaded with people in Sydney planning to protest this afternoon in solidarity with demonstrators in the US not to “import things from happening in other countries here to Australia.”
That rally, planned for Sydney’s Hyde Park, was canceled hours later, after people threatened to create “havoc and protest against the event,” an organizer said on social media.
The rally had been presented as a peaceful protest against the overrepresentation of indigenous Australians in Australia’s criminal justice system as well as in solidarity for Floyd who was “brutally and inhumanly murdered.”
Photo: AFP
However, thousands of protesters are expected at similar rallies planned for Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide on Saturday.
Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull weighed in, telling a Crikey video conference that US President Donald Trump is a “deliberately divisive leader” who “seeks to divide” the US or to “exploit division” that, he said, “far from making America great again, makes America weaker.”
At least four solidarity gatherings were held yesterday in New Zealand, with massive crowds kneeling down at a demonstration in Auckland.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Tens of thousands of people marched from Aotea Square, in central Auckland, to the US embassy carrying signs with messages such as “Be kind,” “Silence is Betrayal” and “Do Better, Be Better.”
Speakers called on New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to denounce the killing of Floyd as a hate crime, and show similar leadership as she did following the mass murders at a Christchurch mosque on March 15 last year, when a lone gunman killed 51 worshipers.
A candlelight vigil was planned for last night in Wellington as well.
On Sunday, thousands of people demonstrated in central London, chanting: “No Justice! No peace!” in Trafalgar Square before marching to the US embassy, where they were greeted by a line of police.
There were protests outside the US embassy in Copenhagen on Sunday, while hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Berlin for the second day in a row, carrying signs that read: “Silence is violence,” “Hold cops accountable” and “Who do you call when police murder?”
A memorial in graffiti appeared on a former part of the Berlin Wall depicting Floyd and the words: “I can’t breathe,” which he uttered as he was dying.
The English soccer player Jadon Sancho was among several playing in Germany to commemorate the events, lifting his jersey after scoring on Sunday to reveal a shirt emblazoned with the handwritten message: “Justice for George Floyd.”
French national Marcus Thuram kneeled after scoring in Borussia Moenchengladbach’s win over Union Berlin. The ’Gladbach forward scored in the first half and then dropped his left knee to the ground for five seconds.
“No explanation needed,” his side’s Twitter account wrote in a post showing Thuram kneeling.
African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat said in a statement that Floyd’s death “firmly reaffirms and reiterates the African Union’s rejection of the continuing discriminatory practices against Black citizens of the United States of America.”
There has been no official reaction from Japan, but hundreds of people protested in front of Shibuya police station in Tokyo on Saturday after a widely viewed video clip showed two police officers using force while questioning a 33-year-old Kurdish man on the street.
An estimated 200 foreign and Japanese protesters denounced Floyd’s killing and accused the police officers of racism and using unnecessary force against the unnamed man, who had reportedly been stopped in connection with an alleged traffic violation.
In Brazil, hundreds of people protested crimes committed by the police against black people in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas.
Police used tear gas to disperse them, with some demonstrators saying “I can’t breathe,” repeating Floyd’s own words.
In Canada, an anti-racism protest degenerated into clashes between Montreal police and some demonstrators. Police declared the gathering illegal after they say projectiles were thrown at officers who responded with pepper spray and tear gas.
Floyd’s death also drew comment from regimes critical of the US that also have a record of violently suppressing dissent.
In Iran, which has in the recent past violently put down nationwide demonstrations by killing hundreds, arresting thousands and disrupting Internet access to the outside world, state television has repeatedly aired images of the US unrest.
Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Abbas Mousavi urged the US government and police to stop the violence.
“To American officials and police: Stop violence against your people and let them breathe,” Mousavi said in English at a news conference in Tehran yesterday.
He also told the American people that “the world is standing with you.”
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the US had “systemic problems in the human rights sphere.”
Additional reporting by AP and Reuters
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