Football fans and right-wing radicals are engaging in clashes with police officers and journalists amid the ongoing rally organized by opponents of Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in central London, a Sputnik correspondent reports from the site
LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th June, 2020) Football fans and right-wing radicals are engaging in clashes with police officers and journalists amid the ongoing rally organized by opponents of Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in central London, a Sputnik correspondent reports from the site.
On Saturday, BLM activists planned to hold the fourth in a row rally in London, but after associations of football fans announced that they would come to the capital over the weekend to protect monuments and police, the action has been canceled. However, football fans and far-right radicals arrived in the center of the UK capital to hold demonstrations.
Whitehall Street in central London is blocked off with policemen lining up in the center of the street to form a human shield. Fans and nationalists are throwing cans and liquor bottles at them. Participants of the rally are mostly very drunk and show aggression not only toward law enforcement officers, but also reporters, threatening them and trying to take away or break thier cameras and smartphones.
Separate skirmishes between rioters and the police occurred both in Trafalgar and Parliament squares. In Parliament Square, demonstrators surrounded a statue of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, which was fenced off to prevent further damage after it had been defaced by activists last week.
Only a few protesters are wearing protective masks, despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Home Secretary Priti Patel called on protesters to stop vandalism and violence against policemen, noting the continuing threat of COVID-19.
"Any perpetrators of violence or vandalism should expect to face the full force of the law. Violence towards our police officers will not be tolerated. Coronavirus remains a threat to us all. Go home to stop the spread of this virus & save lives," she wrote on Twitter.
A wave of protests against racial inequality has swept through the United Kingdom in the wake of the death of George Floyd, an African American man, in police custody in the US city of Minneapolis on May 25. Over the past week, demonstrators clashed with police and turned their attention to statues commemorating public figures linked with racism or the slave trade.
