George Floyd death: Football and social media show solidarity as European protests continue - Euronews

Outrage over the death of George Floyd continued to reverberate in Europe on Tuesday.

Protests are planned in Paris and the Netherlands this evening after demonstrations over recent days in London and Berlin.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell has called Floyd's death an "abuse of power".

It also spread to social media as people began posting blank, black images to draw attention to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Football has also been getting involved. Liverpool, Chelsea and Newcastle players have all stopped training to go down on one knee. The "take a knee" protest was started by NFL star Colin Kaepernick.

French MP Eric Coquerel has called for a protest in Paris on Tuesday evening. It's linked to the death of Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old black man who died in 2016 after his arrest. "Police violence, racism, it's not just in the United States," wrote Coquerel. Another protest is planned in The Hague on Tuesday evening.

Floyd, a 46-year-old black American, died on May 25 after a police officer was filmed with his knee on his neck for several minutes, ignoring the handcuffed man’s cries of distress.

'Acts of domestic terror'

The US saw another night of chaos on Monday evening as protests over police brutality raged on, with the president using a televised address to threaten to send in the military to regain order.

The National Guard has been deployed in a number of cities, but Donald Trump threatened on Monday to use the force of the military to quell protests.

If governors throughout the country do not deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers to bring the situation under control, Trump said the US military would step in to "quickly solve the problem for them” as he called violent acts carried out during the protests “acts of domestic terror".

He called on mayors and governors to deploy the National Guard in sufficient numbers to "dominate the streets".

His announcement came as police under federal command forced peaceful demonstrators outside the White House back with tear gas so Trump could walk to a nearby church and pose with a Bible.

One critic, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, called it a photo op.

Violence escalates

Police officers and national guard soldiers in Kentucky killed a man early on Monday.

Police said they were returning fire after someone in a group shot them first.

Buffalo Police said two people were struck by gunfire during Monday's protest. Meanwhile, a vehicle ploughed into a line of police officers in the city, injuring at least two.

In Louisville, the chief of police was fired following the killing of an owner of a popular barbeque restaurant, reportedly known for offering meals to police officers.

David McAtee died while police and National Guard soldiers were enforcing a curfew early on Monday amid waves of protests over a previous police shooting in Kentucky's largest city.

Police said they were responding to gunfire from a crowd.

George Floyd’s autopsy results released

An autopsy commissioned for Floyd’s family found that he died of asphyxiation due to neck and back compression, the family’s attorneys said.

The new autopsy results found the compression cut off blood to Floyd’s brain, and that the weight on his back made it hard to breathe, attorney Ben Crump said.

One police officer, Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck in videos widely shared online, has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.

Chauvin and three other officers were fired.

'Police kills' application

Images of US demonstrations and of violent clashes between protesters and police have made it on the front pages of most of France's newspapers and rekindled a debate about police violence towards ethnic minorities in the country.

Floyd's death came a month after a French NGO called "La Police Assassine" ("Police Kills") launched an application to upload footage of alleged police violence.

"Since the beginning of lockdown, there has been a real surge in cases of police violence, especially in working-class neighbourhoods," it said.

"The advantage of filming scenes of police violence with the application is that the videos are sent directly to our servers. In case of damage to your mobile phone or arrest of the latter by the police, a copy of the video is kept by our application," it added.

But several MPs last week tabled legislation that would make it illegal to post images of police officers online in which their faces are recognisable.

"A police officer is in charge of respecting the law of the Republic, I share the strong demand of law enforcement to blur their faces on social networks or in the media. We must protect those who protect us," MP Eric Ciotti, from the right-wing Les Republicains party, argued on Twitter.

The bill has been criticised by Reporters Without Borders, an NGO, which said it would "make it very difficult for journalists to cover a large number of public events, which very often involve the presence of police".

The charity has requested that the bill "which would limit information to citizens on the behaviour of the police, not be placed on parliament's agenda, or be examined."

Let's block ads! (Why?)

https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiZ2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmV1cm9uZXdzLmNvbS8yMDIwLzA2LzAyL3VzLWFub3RoZXItbmlnaHQtb2YtY2hhb3MtYXMtdHJ1bXAtdGhyZWF0ZW5zLXRvLWRlcGxveS10aGUtbWlsaXRhcnnSAQA?oc=5

2020-06-03 05:18:51Z