Sunday, June 21, 2020

Black Lives Matter: Solidarity protests in Western Europe

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Nishitha Mandava

Article Title

Black Lives Matter: Solidarity protests in Western Europe

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Global Views 360

Publication Date

June 21, 2020

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“Black Life Matters” Protest at Southampton, UK

“Black Life Matters” Protest at Southampton, UK | Source: Thomas Allsop via Unsplash

The killing of the African-American George Floyd in the hands of Minneapolis police commanded world attention. It witnessed Pan-American protests against police brutality and racism. Countries across the world have stood in support of these protests against racial violence. These protests in America have triggered a number of protests across Western Europe to localise them and condemn racism in their own countries.

Protests against racial violence and police brutality drew large numbers across European capitals and other prominent cities as well. Paris protests alone saw an estimated 20000 people near the Eiffel Tower who protested against the death of George Floyd. These protesters tried to localise the issue of racial violence and police brutality by taking up the case of Traoré, a young black man whose family claims that he died due to suffocation under police custody at Persan (north of Paris) in 2016. These protests have been going on consistently for over a week. Despite the police ban on demonstrations in Paris due to the risk of COVID-19, the demonstrations couldn’t be curbed. Parallel protests were also reported in other cities of France like Lyon, Rennes and Marseille.

Berlin also has been sustaining its ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests for over a week. Demonstrations were held in other German cities such as Cologne, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf. The Bayern Munich footballers wore T-shirts with slogans that read ‘Red card against racism- Black Lives Matter’ in their match against Leverkusen to raise awareness against racial violence. Various German activists believe Floyd’s death has not only triggered anti-racist protests but also multiple questions regarding equitable distribution of resources and representation of diverse races that co-habit in Germany.

In the United Kingdom, too, despite the COVID-19 risk, a large number of protestors stood in solidarity with the U.S protests. In Bristol, demonstrators pulled down the statue of slave trader Edward Colston on 7 June, 2020. Even though these protests were against racial violence, the chords of the protests mainly struck with issues of blacks during COVID-19. British government data showed that blacks living in British were four times more likely to die from COVID-19 as compared to whites. This discrimination by the virus can be attributed to the institutionalised nature of racism and the lack of equitable access to resources for minorities living in Britain.

Protests were held widely in Spain. The U.S embassy outside Madrid has become one of the hotspots for protestors to gather. Hundreds gathered to mourn the death of Floyd and observed silence for him. The city of Budapest too observed silence and chanted songs outside its U.S embassy.

European media has also played a key role in actively condemning Trump for his actions of using military force to tackle the protests. While the French Newspaper Le Monde in its editorials has dubbed Trump as ‘President of division’ the Spanish newspaper El Pais’s headlines read ‘The U.S. Faces Its Worst Racial Conflict in Half a Century’. Trump’s actions to use federal force and active duty military personnel have made the European media to cover the protests more extensively. Newspapers coupled with social media have acted as catalysts in spreading the cause of the protests at a much faster rate.

Floyd’s killing sparked protests against racial violence and systematic racism around the world. However, it resonated at a deeper level with Western European countries primarily due to their rising number of immigrants from African and Arab countries. These countries, for decades, have struggled with accommodating these minorities equally with the mainstream population. The approach to localise these protests has helped to not only denounce racial violence in America but also in their own home country. The nature and extent of these protests have pointed out that governments no longer have the luxury of gradualism and have to instead take up swift actions to eliminate institutionalised racism and police brutality.

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February 4, 2021 4:44 PM

Are Black Americans victims of Police Militarization in the US

In the USA, there are reports of police using tear gas, flashbangs, and many other weapons to fight against the riots which are occurring now in over 350 cities against police brutality against the Black Community. There have been many reports on how the police brutality is disproportionate in terms of race; the Black people are thrice as likely to have violence committed on them by the police force than the whites, and the factor is 1.5 for the Hispanics. There is a first-hand account of a person present in the recent protests who talks about the use of batons on demonstrators.

This, however, leads to the question whether it was the militarization of the police force that caused violence towards minority communities. The police militarization was, in the aftermath of the 9/11 US terrorist attack, justified by the policymakers as a necessary tool to prevent the terrorist attacks in the future. This policy decision led to the military grade weapons and military style training regime for the police force. Some of the states in the US partnered with highly militarized police of Israel for training their police force. Such lethal weapons which were provided to the police force  used against terrorists were gradually used by the police force against common civilians on suspicion of minor crimes and the group of protestors.

The civil right groups were voicing concerns for many years about the use of disproportionate force on the Black and Hispanic Americans, which they blamed on the arming of police with lethal weapons. It was the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, who was shot and killed on Aug. 9, 2014, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in Ferguson, Montana, USA that galvanised the public to demand for demilitarization of police force. As a response to public anger against the killing of Michael Brown, President Obama set up a Task Force on 21st Century Policing. This task force, in its report put special emphasis on de-escalating situations, with civilians in training and policies, and reduced funding by the Department of Homeland Security for such weapons. However these recommendations failed to have much effect on solving the issues at hand.

The continued use of such lethal weapons casts the police force as a separate, powerful entity which is to be feared, instead of a friendly cop who is trying to provide security to a citizen in distress. Such equipment serves to distance the police from the people, giving them power, and if left unchecked, entitlement over the rest of the citizens. In many instances the presence of a weapon itself leads to more aggressive behaviour and there have been calls to make the police wear body cams to restrain them from acting with disproportionate lethal force.

The racial profiling and discriminatory actions against the black and other communities that was already practiced by the police forces was now being enforced by more lethal power in the force’s hands. A study by Olugbenga Ajilore shows that counties with more race segregation were more likely to request additional weapons, and counties with an African American/Asian American population are more likely to acquire military equipment. Another report of 2017 shows a direct correlation between the degree of police militarization and the killing of civilians in police action.

It can be reasonably said that the militarization, in some sense, inflated the already existing racial profiling based violent actions of police force.

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