‘Systemic racism’ will take US to breaking point: Rights activists
Yusef Jalali
Press TV, Tehran
Police cars on fire, clouds of tear gas, looted stores, and violent clashes between police and protesters have been everyday scenes in the US, following the release of this gruesome video last week, showing a black American man dying under the weight of a white police officer’s knee on his neck.
In Tehran, these rights activists have held a webinar to condemn US’s police brutality against people of color.
Public anger has gripped the US, despite curfews and amid a national lockdown because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Now what rubs salt into the wound is President Trump’s remarks with racist overtones when he called the outraged protesters “thugs” and threatened that demonstrators could be met with police resistance.
US police has a long track record of unpunished violence against black people.
The tragic fate of George Floyd calls to mind the killing of Michael Brown, who was shot in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.
The list goes on; for older generations, it is déjà vu to the Rodney King riots in 1992 and the bloodshed during the civil rights movement.
It seems that racism doesn’t take a break in the US. Rights activists here say what makes it worse is that all these ethnic cleansing crimes are committed in a country that claims to be the pioneer of human rights.
Comments