Washington
Protests sweeping the United States over the death of George Floyd reverberated on the other side of the globe Monday when thousands marched in solidarity on the streets of New Zealand.
The rallies were peaceful in contrast to the days of sometimes violent protests in the US after Floyd, an African-American, died while handcuffed and as a white police officer, who has since been charged with third-degree murder, knelt on his neck.
In Auckland, about 2,000 people marched to the US Consulate chanting ‘no justice, no peace’ and ‘black lives matter’. Another 500 gathered in Christchurch, with a similar number standing in the rain at an evening vigil at Parliament in Wellington where they were presented with hundreds of names said to be Americans who have died due to racial injustice. Nigerian-New Zealand musician, Mazbou Q, who organised the protest, said the gatherings were not just about the death of Floyd. ‘The… persecution of the black community is an ongoing phenomenon. The same white supremacy which has led to disproportionate killings of black people in the US exists here in New Zealand,’ he told the crowd in Auckland.
Police fired tear gas outside the White House late Sunday as anti-racism protestors again took to the streets to voice fury at police brutality, and major US cities were put under curfew to suppress rioting.
With the Trump administration branding instigators of six nights of rioting as domestic terrorists, there were more confrontations between protestors and police and fresh outbreaks of looting. Violent clashes erupted repeatedly in a small park next to the White House, with authorities using tear gas, pepper spray and flash bang grenades to disperse crowds who lit several large fires and damaged property.
Local US leaders appealed to citizens to give constructive outlet to their rage over the death of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis, while night-time curfews were imposed in cities including Washington, Los Angeles and Houston. One closely watched protest was outside the state capitol in Minneapolis’ twin city of St. Paul, where several thousand people gathered before marching down a highway.
‘We have black sons, black brothers, black friends, we don’t want them to die. We are tired of this happening, this generation is not having it, we are tired of oppression,’ said Muna Abdi, a 31-year-old black woman who joined the protest. Hundreds of police and National Guard troops were deployed ahead of the protest.
At one point, some of the protestors who had reached a bridge were forced to scramble for cover when a truck drove at speed after having apparently breached a barricade. The driver was taken to hospital after the protestors hauled him from the vehicle, although there were no immediate reports of other casualties.
The New York Times said he was later arrested. There were other large-scale protests in cities including New York and Miami.
Washington’s mayor ordered a curfew from 11:00 pm until 6:00 am, as a report in the New York Times said that President Donald Trump had been rushed by Secret Service agents into an underground bunker at the White House on Friday night during an earlier protest.
Looting was reported Sunday night in Philadelphia and the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica, and images on Fox TV showed ransacked Rolex and Gucci stores in New York city. Officials in LA — a city scarred by the 1992 riots over the police beating of Rodney King, an African-American man — imposed a curfew from 4:00 pm Sunday until dawn.
‘Please, use your discretion and go early, go home, stay home,’ the city’s mayor Eric Garcetti said on CNN. The shocking death last Monday of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, at the hands of police in Minneapolis ignited the nationwide wave of outrage over law enforcement’s repeated use of lethal force against unarmed African Americans.
Floyd stopped breathing after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and is due to make his first appearance in court on Monday. —AFP
