Black Lives Matter protests take place across the world as activists clash in France

3

View
comments

Black Lives Matter protests have continued across the world with vigour this weekend as astonishing footage shows rival anti-racist and far-Right demonstrators fighting on the roof of a seven-storey building in Paris.

The videos were shot in the French capital on Saturday afternoon after members of the Generation Identity group unfurled a banner reading ‘Justice for the Victims of Anti-White Racism’.

It was placed on the top of a building in the Place de la Republique, where 15000 people were protesting against the alleged murder of a black suspect in police custody.

As anger mounted, anti-racism campaigners made their way up on the roof and confronted the Generation Identity activists.

A local police spokesman: ‘Both sides squared up after clambering through a skylight at the top of the building. The situation was incredibly dangerous, and there was a very strong chance that someone could fall.

Scroll down for video. 

‘This danger calmed the situation, and then officers were able to intervene, making 12 arrests.’

The confrontation was filmed by members of the vast crowd down below, which was chanting insults at the Generation Identity members throughout. 

People living on the top floor of the building were seen using kitchen knives and scissors to tear the banner to pieces. 

Generation Identity is a Europe-wide group, with a large following in the UK, where it has run ‘Defend London’ campaigns. 

Its leaders frequently express their admiration for the late British politician Enoch Powell, who made a notorious ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech about immigration in 1968. 

Last August, three members of Generation Identity were sentenced to six months in prison by a court in the French town of Gap for organising an anti-migrant operation in the Alps.

It had rented two helicopters and a plane tagged with the slogan ‘Defend Europe’ to track down migrants crossing the mountain range in April 2018.

The defendants were prosecuted for ‘activities carried out under conditions likely to create confusion in the minds of the public with the exercise of a public function’.  

Saturday’s rally by anti-racism protesters in Paris was part of worldwide action inspired by America’s Black Lives Matter protests. 

Tear gas and baton charges were used by police as they came under attack around the Place de la Republique, one of the French capital’s most famous protest squares.

Protests paying tribute to George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died during an arrest on May 25, have been seen across the world this weekend including in the U.S, Japan, New Zealand, UK, Prague, Czech Republic, Lausanne, Switzerland and Breda, the Netherlands.

The protests in Paris this weekend were organised under the banner ‘Justice for Adama’, after Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old black man who died in French police custody in 2016.

Family and friends said he died of asphyxiation, in the manner of George Floyd, the American said to have been murdered by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, last month. 

Among the protesters was Assa Traoré, Adama’s sister, who called on people to ‘denounce social, racial, and police violence’.

Ms Traoré said: ‘What’s happening in the United States is happening in France. Our brothers are dying.’ 

Mr Traore had run away from a police check in Beaumont-sur-Oise, a town north of Paris, and hours later died at a nearby police station.

The vague circumstances of the incident have led to allegations of a state cover-up, and his family have been fighting for justice ever since. 

Meanwhile the U.S. embassy in Seoul draped a huge Black Lives Matter banner on its mission building and tweeted a picture of it in support of an anti-racism campaign across America.

The embassy tweeted a picture of the banner in black and white on Saturday along with the caption: ‘The U.S. Embassy stands in solidarity with fellow Americans grieving and peacefully protesting to demand positive change. 

‘Our #BlackLivesMatter banner shows our support for the fight against racial injustice and police brutality as we strive to be a more inclusive & just society.’

U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris retweeted the message, adding ‘USA is a free and diverse nation… from that diversity we gain our strength.’ 

 

The banner is seen as a rare, open support for the protest by an appointee of President Donald Trump after Trump linked violent protests to ‘thugs.’

Harris, a 40-year veteran of the U.S. Navy who started in Seoul in 2018 after Trump appointed him, has privately said that he is planning on exiting his position before the end of the year. 

No comment was immediately available from the embassy today. The embassy also made some waves last year when it displayed a rainbow banner in support of the LGBTQ community.  

In a central Toyko park today several hundred people marched peacefully, holding handmade signs that read ‘Black Lives Matter,’ highlighting the outrage over the death of George Floyd even in a country often perceived as homogeneous and untouched by racial issues.

Mitsuaki Shidara, standing in the crowd at Yoyogi Park, said Japan has plenty of discrimination problems, but they’re overlooked.

He said: ‘We are all human first, but we are divided by nationality, gender, religion, skin color.

‘What´s happening in the U.S. shows racism is going on, even after 400 years.’

Mio Kosaka, another participant, said she had been a victim of discrimination at times while growing up in Beijing and Tokyo, because her parents were Japanese and Chinese.

‘I think it is so wrong to discriminate based on appearance, and I wanted to relay the message that the American people have allies in Japan,’ said Kosaka, who is studying design at a U.S. college.

‘Some people don´t even know there is discrimination. Awareness needs to be raised,’ she added. 

In New Zealand, thousands protested in Auckland and Wellington today. The Auckland protest began at the central Aotea Square and ended at the U.S. Consulate, where people took a knee and observed a minute of silence for Floyd.

‘When George Floyd took his last breath, it allowed the rest of us to breathe,’ social activist Julia Whaipooti told the crowd, according to the news organization Stuff.

Whaipooti said that while New Zealanders were showing solidarity with people in the U.S., highlighting discrimination at home was critical.

In Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, protesters marched from Civic Square to the grounds of Parliament, chanting ‘Black Lives Matter’ and holding placards with slogans including ‘Racism is a pandemic, let´s fight it!’

Sunday´s turnout in Tokyo underlined how Japan has historically been reticent in dealing with diversity and is now trying to understand the Black Lives Matter movement and grapple with its own history of discrimination.

Such attitudes date back to the feudal era, with the Buraku underclass, and include more recently the offspring of marriages between Japanese and non-Japanese. The children are called ‘hafu,’ derived from ‘half,’ which critics resent as discriminatory.

Last week, a rally with similar themes in Tokyo drew several hundred people, and one in Osaka, in central Japan, drew about 2,000. More Black Lives Matter gatherings are planned for next week, in the southwestern city of Fukuoka and the central city of Nagoya. The rallies reflect how more people of various backgrounds are becoming part of a rapidly globalizing Japan.

Although Japan is not reputed for police brutality, people have come forward recently, complaining that police have treated foreigners, especially black people, unfairly, stopping them for no reason, or have handled people with unneeded force.

‘There is no country without racism, and I think the countries that don´t portray it are just because people are ignorant of the problem,’ said Kazuna Yamamoto, a Japanese woman living in Chile who was taking part in Sunday´s rally in Tokyo.

‘There is inequality because certain people are definitely profiting or benefiting from it,’ she said.

Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka, the world’s highest-paid female athlete, has also been vocal in raising awareness about racism in Japan and has gotten some flak on social media. Osaka, who has Haitian and Japanese parents, has expressed empathy for the Black Lives Matter movement, and posted a photo of Colin Kaepernick, the NFL player who knelt during the U.S. national anthem, in protest of racism and police brutality.

‘I hate when random people say athletes shouldn’t get involved with politics and just entertain. Firstly, this is a human rights issue. Secondly, what gives you more right to speak than me? By that logic if you work at IKEA you are only allowed to talk about the GRÖNLID,’ Osaka said in a recent tweet, referring to a type of sofa sold at the furniture chain.