George Floyd protests latest updates: Thousands rally against racism, police brutality
- Leaders in New York City have asked the mayor to lift the city’s curfew and defuse tensions
- Germany and Britain have seen large turnouts in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement
- Mourners paid respects to George Floyd at a memorial service in North Carolina
All times in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC/GMT)
12:29 Thousands of people in Spain have turned out for anti-racism protests. Several thousand gathered in front of the US embassy in Madrid, many holding signs saying “I can’t breathe,” among George Floyd’s last words.
The Spanish organization of black, African and African-origin groups in Spain (CNAAE) announced that protests were ongoing in 12 Spanish cities, from the Basque country to the Canary Islands.
11:47 New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the curfew in the city was lifted “effective immediately” after peaceful rallies in America’s biggest city helped defuse tension between protesters and the police.
“Yesterday and last night we saw the very best of our city,” de Blasio wrote on Twitter. “Tomorrow we take the first big step to restart. Keep staying safe.”
The authorities imposed a curfew on Monday after rioters looted shops and smashed storefront windows in various parts of the city. The measure aimed to keep residents indoors after 11 p.m. which was then changed to 8 p.m. De Blasio had insisted the curfew would stay in place over the weekend. On Saturday, police did not enforce the curfew and instead let protesters march through Manhattan and Brooklyn over two hours later.
08:14 In Hong Kong, a small group of demonstrators rallied in front of the US Consulate in protest of police brutality and racism in the US. Out of several dozens of protesters, most were international students or activists from the local League of Social Democrats.
“It’s important to get our message across to others around the world to remind them that even though we are far away, we are with them 100% in spirit — black lives matter,” 28-year-old British student Quinland Anderson told the Reuters news agency.
The small protest comes after months of political instability in Hong Kong, which saw brutal clashes between protesters and police over autonomy over mainland China. Earlier this week, China commented on the US upheaval by calling racism “a chronic disease of American society” and slamming the police crackdown as a “textbook example of its world-famous double standards.”
“Why does the US lionize the so-called Hong Kong independence… while calling people who protest against racism ‘rioters’?” asked foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.
Yesterday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blasted Beijing’s “laughable propaganda.” He said that China’s Communist Party was “seeking to conflate” the events in the US with its own “denial of basic human rights and freedom” and that its efforts “should be seen for the fraud that they are.”
07:59 Protesters toppled a statue of a Confederate general after a rally in Richmond, the capital of the US state of Virginia. Photos published by the local Richmond Times-Dispatch show what appears to be red paint on the monument, and a rope was apparently tied around the throat of the statue of General Williams Carter Wickham, which stood since 1891. A police spokeswoman said she did not know if any arrests have been made.
Many in the US have called for removing monuments dedicated to political and military leaders of the Confederacy, the pro-slavery union in the American Civil War. Last week, Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said he would seek the removal of several Confederate monuments in the city center, and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam said that a state-owned statue of the best-known Confederate general, Robert E. Lee, would be removed “as soon as possible.”
07:14 Australia’s Finance Minister Mathias Cormann slammed the “Black Lives Matter” protesters as “reckless and irresponsible” for violating social distancing rules designed to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
“I think it is incredibly selfish,” Cormann told Sky News after thousands of people marched in Sydney, Melbourne, and other big Australian cities, some of them defying bans issued by the authorities.
Cormann later told reporters that many people had to stay away from funerals of their loved ones amid the pandemic.
“But we are going to have a mass gathering of tens of thousands of people in complete breach of the rules that apply to everyone else — it is absolutely reckless and irresponsible,” the conservative politician said.
Australia, with its 25 million people, has seen 7,255 coronavirus cases and 102 deaths. The government has managed to largely contain the outbreak due to strict border controls and social distancing measures.
Senior Labour representative Richard Marles also commented that the crowds made him “uncomfortable” but said he was not casting judgment on the protests, which also focused on the discrimination against Australia’s indigenous population.
“I don’t feel like I’m in a position to say to indigenous Australians who are protesting against that, that this is a selfish and indulgent act,” Marles told the state broadcaster ABC.
06:37 In Berlin, 28 police officers were injured in the aftermath of a largely peaceful protest against racism and the killing of George Floyd. Some 15,000 people attended the rally in Berlin, which was only planned to include 1,500 people due to the coronavirus restrictions. The participants also observed a silence lasting 8 minutes and 46 seconds, honoring African-American George Floyd who died after a white police officer held a knee on his neck for this amount of time.
After the protest, however, a large group of people started throwing stones and bottles at the police and passers-by, leading to scuffles. Berlin police said 93 people were arrested.
03:50 In one of the few skirmishes protesters had with police, authorities in Seattle used flash-bang devices and pepper spray to disperse a crowd of protesters in the city.
The mayhem in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood followed a large, peaceful demonstration earlier in the day with medical workers demonstrating against racism and police brutality.
03:40 The top editor of US newspaper The Philadelphia Inquirer has resigned, after a headline on one article about the protests caused an uproar within the newsroom and in the city.
In a column published last week about looting and vandalism on the margins of protests of George Floyd’s death, the Inquirer used the headline ”Buildings Matter, Too,” in reference to the ”Black Lives Matter” movement that has led the demonstrations.
The article was written by architecture critic Inga Saffron, who expressed concern that buildings damaged in violence over the past week could “leave a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia.”
The paper’s black staff members condemned the headline and some 30 members of the Inquirer’s 210-member editorial staff called in sick to express their outrage.
In response, the title was changed to ”Black Lives Matter. Do Buildings?” which drew renewed scorn. Eventually, the newspaper settled on the title ”Damaging buildings disproportionately hurt the people protesters are trying to uplift.”
Ultimately, The Inquirer apologized for a “horribly wrong” decision to use the original headline.
Publisher and CEO Lisa Hughes said in a memo to staff that the headline was “offensive and inappropriate” and said the newspaper needed a more diverse workforce.
02:00 US former-Vice President Joe Biden vowed to advocate for police reforms and “long-overdue, concrete policies to reverse systemic racism,” if elected president this November.
Biden made the remarks in an op-ed published by the Los Angeles Times, a day after he clinched the Democratic nomination for president, having reached the required number of delegates.
“If elected, I am committed to establishing a national police oversight commission within 100 days of taking office,” the former vice president promised.
“We need to implement real community policing and ensure that every police department in the country undertakes a comprehensive review of their hiring, their training, and their de-escalation practices, with the federal government providing the tools and resources needed to implement reforms,” Biden said.
He called on Congress to “take action immediately” to outlaw chokeholds, stop the transfer of weapons of war to local police forces, improve oversight and accountability, and create a standard model on the use of force by police officers.
01:30 An Associated Press investigation found scant evidence to back President Donald Trump’s claim that left-leaning radicals and antifa have been behind the protests against police brutality, in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
Trump has said that antifa, whom he has referred to as radical-left thugs engaging in domestic terrorism, was orchestrating the violence, an assertion repeated by Attorney General William Barr.
”The violence instigated and carried out by antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly,” Barr said in a statement issued Sunday.
Read more: Trump’s ‘antifa’ accusations spark debate in Germany, the movement’s birthplace
AP conducted an analysis of court records, employment histories, social media posts and other sources of information for 217 people arrested last weekend in Minneapolis and the District of Columbia. The two cities have been at the epicenter of the protests.
But the investigation found that more than 85% of those arrested were local residents and only a handful of those charged with offenses such as curfew violations, rioting and failure to obey law enforcement, appeared to have any affiliation with organized groups.
Individuals arrested for looting and property destruction, including arson, burglary and theft, tended to already have criminal records. They were overwhelmingly local residents, who sought to take advantage of the chaos.
Only a few of those arrested were left-leaning activists, including one self-described anarchist, while others appeared to be right-leaning, including some Trump supporters.
Federal law enforcement officials have likewise not offered much evidence that antifa-aligned protesters are behind the protest movement.
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Protests against racism, police brutality around the world
Washington, DC
One of the largest rallies in the United States was held in the capital, Washington, DC, where thousands of people of all colors took to the streets near the White House, which was barricaded with black metal grates.
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Protests against racism, police brutality around the world
New York City
Thousands of protesters in New York City gathered in the city’s squares and parks to demonstrate.
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Protests against racism, police brutality around the world
Berlin
People in the German capital sat in silent protest for 8 minutes and 46 seconds — the amount of time a white police officer kneeled on George Floyd’s neck before he lost consciousness as three other officers stood nearby.
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Protests against racism, police brutality around the world
Munich
Some 30,000 people assembled at Munich’s Königsplatz to show solidarity with other protesters and the Black Lives Matter movement.
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Protests against racism, police brutality around the world
St. Petersburg, Florida
People of St. Petersburg in the US state of Florida went out in the rain to make their voices heard.
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Protests against racism, police brutality around the world
Paris
Hundreds of people gathered in Paris defying a police ban on large protests. Members of the multiracial crowd chanted the name of Adama Traore, a black man whose death while in police custody has been likened by critics to Floyd’s death.
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Protests against racism, police brutality around the world
Manchester
Many protesters, including some of these in the English city of Manchester, wore protective face masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
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Protests against racism, police brutality around the world
Basel
Arond 5,000 people gathered in Basel, Switzerland, in a Black Lives Matter demonstration there.
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Protests against racism, police brutality around the world
Adelaide
Crowds filled Victoria Square in Adelaide after receiving special permission for the event. The march through the southern Australian city was held after police Commissioner Grant Stevens approved the rally on Friday. “This is a unique and extraordinary event. There is a sentiment that suggests people should have a right to protest on significant matters,” Stevens said.
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Protests against racism, police brutality around the world
Tunis
In Tunis, Tunisia, hundreds of protesters chanted: “We want justice! We want to breathe!”
00:00 Two police officers from the city of Buffalo in the US state of New York were charged with assault after they were seen on video shoving a 75-year-old protester during a demonstration over the death of George Floyd.
In the clip, the elderly man falls to the ground and the back of his head hits the pavement, loses consciousness and begins to bleed.
Officers Robert McCabe and Aaron Torgalski surrendered to authorities Saturday morning and pleaded not guilty to second-degree assault. The two were released without bail.
The officers were suspended without pay and if convicted of the felony assault charge, they face up to seven years in prison.
McCabe’s lawyer, Tom Burton, said his client was a decorated military veteran with a clean record as a police officer, noting that it was not McCabe’s intention to hurt the 75-year-old man.
Burton added that if the victim had followed police commands to back off, ”none of this would have happened.”
Dozens of Buffalo police officers were outraged by their fellow officers’ suspension and in a symbolic gesture, stepped down from the department’s crowd control unit on Friday.
The video of the encounter sparked outrage online, but also among local leaders. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said he believed there was “criminal liability.”
“What we saw was horrendous and disgusting, and I believe, illegal,” he added.
22:00 US broadcaster Fox News apologized for displaying a chart that correlating the stock market’s performance with the aftermath of the deaths of George Floyd, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Michael Brown.
The conservative news outlet aired the graph on Friday on its show ”Special Report with Bret Baier” to illustrate gains made by the SP 500 index one week after Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, the police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in 2014, and Geroge Floyd’s death while in Minneapolis police custody.
Fox News said in a statement that the chart “should have never aired on television without full context.”
”We apologize for the insensitivity of the image and take this issue seriously,” the broadcaster said.
Host Bret Baier retweeted Fox’s apology without further comment.
21:50 The northwestern US city of Seattle saw its ninth consecutive day of protests over the death of George Floyd. A large crowd of medical workers, many of them wearing lab coats or scrubs, took part in the demonstration.
One sign said, “Nurses kneel with you, not on you.” Another read, “Police violence and racism are a public health emergency.”
The demonstrations in Seattle have been among the largest in the city in years.
After police were severely criticized for using tear gas and pepper spray to disperse largely peaceful crowds, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and Police Chief Carmen Best imposed a 30-day moratorium on the department’s use of one kind of tear gas and a review of crowd control policies.
21:00 Protesters gathered in New York City, amid lingering tension between demonstrators and police over the city’s evening curfew.
Marches have been planned throughout the day and into the evening in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, despite the curfew that begins at 8:00 p.m. local time (midnight UTC). Local politicians and civil liberties advocates have come out against the curfew, saying it causes needless confrontation, as officers try to enforce it.
But Mayor Bill de Blasio has insisted the curfew will remain in place throughout the weekend.
Friday’s protests in New York City saw some clashes between protesters and police when law enforcement tried to enforce the curfew.
Images on social media showed officers in Brooklyn surrounding a group of demonstrators and chasing others down with batons. In Manhattan’s East Side, police also used force to break up remnants of a march that started near the mayor’s official residence.
Protests were held in several New York City boroughs
19:30 Thousands of protesters are gathering on the streets of US capital, Washington DC, for what is expected to be the largest demonstration in the city against police brutality since the death in the police custody of unarmed African-American George Floyd on May 25.
Washington, like many cities in the US, has seen daily protests over the past week. They have been largely peaceful, with people in the capital marching back and forth from the White House to the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial.
According to a tweet from the capital’s traffic police, there were around 6,000 protesters split between the Lincoln Memorial and in front of the White House, by midday. Officials said they expected crowds of between 100,000 to 200,000, despite soaring temperatures.
Protesters close to the White House held banners and signs that read “no peace without justice,” “stop racism now” and “I can’t breathe” — the last words of Floyd who died after a police officer knelt on his neck for close to nine minutes.
Ahead of the planned demonstration, military vehicles and officers in fatigues closed off much of downtown Washington to traffic. The White House has been fortified with new fencing and extra security precautions.
Hundreds of demonstrators who marched past the George Washington University Hospital chanted “Hands up, Don’t shoot!” “We March for hope, not for hate,” and “I can’t breathe!”
“Our anger is not just about police brutality,” tweeted DW correspondent Alexander von Nahmen, citing Roger Campbell II — one of the speakers addressing protesters at the Lincoln memorial.
18:09 Hundreds of mourners are lining up to pay respects to George Floyd at a memorial service and public viewing at church in Raeford, North Carolina, close to his hometown of Fayetteville.
The line of people waiting to view the 46-year-old’s coffin included families with young children and teenagers.
One young woman wore a green and gold graduation cap and gown as she walked beside her parents. Many in the line wore face masks.
When the hearse bearing Floyd’s coffin arrived, some mourners chanted “Black Power,” “George Floyd” and “No justice, no peace,” from beneath the covered entrance.
The unarmed African-American was killed when a US police officer last week knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes while three other officers looked no. The four officers have been arrested, with one facing murder charges, and the others for aiding and abetting.
Sometimes-violent protests have been taking place across the US, and globally, since his death on May 25.
17:00 Anti-racism protests drew thousands of people across Germany, with demonstrators filling up city centers from Berlin to Dusseldorf.
Thousands gathered in Alexanderplatz in Berlin’s city center, holding signs that said “Black Lives Matter” and “No justice, no peace.”
“The #Alex is packed. No more people are being allowed in. Distancing is not possible,” one user tweeted.
Protests in Cologne, Münster and Nuremberg also drew large crowds, along with smaller cities such as Flensburg in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein.
Read more: George Floyd killing spurs fresh protests across Europe
15:00 Welcome to DW’s rolling coverage of the protests sweeping the US and the rest of the world in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd. The 46-year-old African American died in Minneapolis last week after a police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes, despite crying out “I can’t breathe.” Since then, the US has experienced its worst civil unrest since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
jcg/sms (AP, Reuters)
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