Top EU official calls George Floyd’s death an abuse of power as world expresses solidarity, criticism
BRUSSELS — The European Union’s top diplomat said Tuesday that the death of George Floyd was the result of an abuse of power.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters that, “like the people of the United States, we are shocked and appalled by the death of George Floyd.”
Floyd died last week after he was pinned to the pavement by a white police officer in Minneapolis who put his knee on the handcuffed black man’s neck until he stopped breathing. His death set off protests that have spread across America.
Borrell says law and order officials must not be “using their capacities in the way that has been used in this very, very unhappy death of George Floyd. This is an abuse of power, and this has to be denounced.”
He underlined that Europeans “support the right to peaceful protest, and also we condemn violence and racism of any kind, and for sure, we call for a de-escalation of tensions.”
Borrell said that “we trust in the ability of the Americans to come together, to heal as a nation and to address these important issues during these difficult times.”
Protesters around the world have expressed solidarity with Americans demonstrating against Floyd’s death.
A week after George Floyd’s death, wrenching scenes still play out on streets of US cities
Thousands of protesters marched through downtown Sydney on Tuesday to do just that.
The protesters in Australia’s largest city chanted, “I can’t breathe” — some of the final words of both Floyd and David Dungay, a 26-year-old Aboriginal man who died in a Sydney prison in 2015 while being restrained by five guards.
The demonstrators carried placards reading, “Black Lives Matter,” “Aboriginal Lives Matter,” “White Silence Is Violence” and, referring to those protesting in cities across the U.S., “We See You, We Hear You, We Stand With You.” Other placards read, “We’re here because they aren’t,” with depictions of Floyd and Dungay.
They marched from Hyde Park to the New South Wales state Parliament, with plans to continue to the U.S. Consulate.
Get live updates from Los Angeles Times journalists as they report on protests across the U.S. after the death of George Floyd while in police custody.
“It’s just gut-wrenching, the climate of what’s happening in America, and it’s also happening here in Australia, though it’s subtle. Racism is real for me,” said one of the protesters, Aoatua Lee.
Around 2,000 demonstrators had also gathered in Australia’s west coast city of Perth on Monday night to peacefully protest Floyd’s death, and rallies are planned for other Australian cities this week.
An indigenous Australian lawmaker called on governments to use Floyd’s death as an opportunity to reduce deaths of indigenous people in custody.
“I think we should be using it as an opportunity,” Linda Burney told Australian Broadcasting Corp., referring to Floyd’s death. “Whether we like it or not, it doesn’t take much for racism to come out of the underbelly of this country.”
African leaders are also speaking up over the killing of Floyd.
“It cannot be right that, in the 21st century, the United States, this great bastion of democracy, continues to grapple with the problem of systemic racism,” Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, said in a statement, adding that black people the world over are shocked and distraught.
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Kenyan opposition leader and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga offered a prayer for the U.S., “that there be justice and freedom for all human beings who call America their country.”
Like some in Africa who have spoken out, Odinga also noted troubles at home, saying the judging of people by character instead of skin color “is a dream we in Africa, too, owe our citizens.”
South Africa’s finance minister, Tito Mboweni, recalled leading a small protest outside the U.S. Embassy several years ago over the apparent systemic killings of blacks. Mboweni said the U.S. ambassador at the time, Patrick Gaspard, “invited me to his office and said: ‘What you see is nothing, it is much worse.’”
In Europe on Monday, thousands spilled across streets in Amsterdam to denounce police brutality, and those demonstrating in Paris urged the French government to take police violence more seriously and held up signs like “Racism is suffocating us.”
Joe Biden meets with community leaders at a predominantly African American church in Delaware to listen and address volatile racial tensions.
Some government leaders have seen the U.S. unrest as a chance to highlight what they see as American hypocrisy on protest movements at home versus abroad.
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam questioned the foreign criticism over an imminent national security law being imposed in the semiautonomous Chinese territory.
“They take their own country’s national security very seriously, but for the security of our country, especially the situation in Hong Kong, they are looking at it through tinted glasses,” Lam said Tuesday.
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