Death of a Demonstrator in London Was Not So “Natural”: Police Provoked Confrontations

 

Activists interviewed by an alternative journalism collective Pueblos Sin Fronteras reported that the police provocation made the protests violent, penning demonstrators in separate corrals and preventing them from moving for hours, without access to water, food, or restrooms.  This may explain the collapse of a citizen who died this Wednesday while the demonstrators were being corralled by the police.

The protests in London this Wednesday, which were among many protests against the meeting of the leaders of the 20 most industrialized countries, ended with the death of a demonstrator, the arrests of more than 80, and tens of injured people.

The initially peaceful protests turned violent as the police penned thousands of citizens who marched against the G20 policies into “corrals,” preventing them from moving for hours.

Listen to the report of Pueblos sin Fronteras:

Activists interviewed by Pueblos sin Fronteras condemned the officers who for hours blocked men, women, and children from moving, denying them access to food, water, or restrooms.

The clashes with the police were concentrated in the financial center of London.  Environmentalists, students, workers, and pacifists denounced the governments for continuing to bail out the banks, which caused the global economic crisis, and ignoring the poor.

A group of youths smashed windows of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the banking institution that caused popular anger when the news of its former president receiving an annual pension of over a million dollars became public, at a moment when the economic crisis is hitting Great Britain hard.

Later, the police beat up a group of students who were engaged in an act of peaceful civil disobedience, holding a sit-in in the middle of the street.


The original article “Muerte del manifestante en Londres no fue tan ‘natural’: Policía provocó los enfrentamientos” was published by YVKE Mundial on 2 April 2009.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).