World Nations Protest Against US Police Killing of George Floyd

By Staff, Agencies

Protesters in cities across the world have staged rallies in solidarity with tens of thousands of Americans in the United States against rampant police brutality and racial profiling, following the killing of unarmed African-American George Floyd last week.

46-year-old Floyd died on May 25 in the northern US city of Minneapolis after a white police officer pressed his knee on his neck for nearly 10 minutes as he continually gasped, “please, I can’t breathe,” triggering massive rallies and clashes with police in many cities across the US.

Protests then spread to more cities in the US and across the world as US President Donald Trump threatened protesters near the White House with the use of “the most vicious dogs and most ominous weapons,” reverberating memories of suppressing the uprising of blacks across the country during the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Nearly 10,000 protesters in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam shouted “I can’t breathe” as they converged on the city center’s Dam Square on Monday to express their solidarity with the protesters in the US.

Relatively, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Tuesday that she had been “horrified” by the killing of Floyd while in custody of US police officers, and she welcomed peaceful protest rallies in her country in solidarity.

Her remarks came after thousands of New Zealanders demonstrated peacefully on Monday.

At least four solidarity rallies were staged across the country, with massive crowds kneeling at a protest event in Auckland. 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.”

In Australia, however, a demonstration planned for Tuesday afternoon in Sydney was cancelled on Monday, after people threatened to “create havoc and protest against the event,” according to an organizer.

Prior to the cancellation, however, Prime Minister Scott Morrison had called on protesters not to “import things happening in other countries here to Australia,” insisting that the scenes in the US were “terribly disturbing, shocking” and “made [him] cringe.”

Protesters in Canada, Europe and the Mideast condemned racism and demanded justice for George Floyd, who was killed in US custody.

In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his rivals in the opposition pledged to combat racism at home on Monday.

Also in France, scores of protester in Paris knelt in silence while holding signs in front of the American Embassy on Monday to express their solidarity with Floyd and condemn persistent police brutality targeting people of color in the US.