BEIJING: China said Monday (Jun 1) unrest in the United States highlighted its severe problems of racism and police violence, and exposed Washington's double standards in supporting Hong Kong's protesters.
"Black people's lives are also lives. Their human rights must also be guaranteed," foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters in Beijing, referring to the death in custody of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis.
"Racism against ethnic minorities in the US is a chronic disease of American society," Zhao added.
"The current situation reflects once more the severity of the problems of racism and police violence in the US."
Chinese diplomats and state media have seized on the violent unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd to accuse the US of hypocrisy and compare American protesters with demonstrators in Hong Kong.
Beijing has long been infuriated by criticism from Western capitals, especially Washington, over its handling of the protests that shook Hong Kong last year.
Zhao on Monday said the US government's response to protests at home was a "textbook example of its world-famous double standards".
"Why does the US lionise the so-called Hong Kong independence and black violence elements as heroes and activists, while calling people who protest against racism 'rioters'?" Zhao asked.
China has insisted that "foreign forces" are to blame for the turmoil in Hong Kong, where protesters – described by Beijing as rioters – have marched in the millions since June last year and often clashed with the police.
Beijing sparked outrage and concern earlier this month with a plan to impose a national security law on Hong Kong that it said was needed to curb "terrorism".
It was condemned by activists and Western nations as another attempt to chip away at the city's freedoms.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying also took aim at Washington.
"I can't breathe," she said on Twitter, with a screenshot of a tweet by US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus that had criticised China's policy in Hong Kong.
Hua was quoting the words Floyd was heard saying repeatedly before his death – after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
George Floyd’s dying words, “I can’t breathe”, serve as a metaphor for a society choking on its increasingly toxic politics, says the Financial Times’ Edward Luce.
Protesters face off with police outside the White House in Washington, DC, early on May 30, 2020. (Photo: AFP/Eric Baradat)
WASHINGTON DC: The novelist William Faulkner said: “The past is not dead. It is not even past.”
The past 72 hours of burning US cities triggered parallels with 1968 – a year of urban white flight that ended with the election of Richard Nixon. He won on a law-and-order platform that appealed implicitly to white anxiety.
Donald Trump does not deal in implicit language. In response to protests in Minneapolis after the police suffocation last week of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, Mr Trump tweeted: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts”.
The line was used by George Wallace, the segregationist third-party candidate in 1968. Republicans launched the “southern strategy” to win over resentful white Democrats after the civil rights revolution.
Mr Trump’s 2016 campaign was the apotheosis of that approach. But history offers little clue as to whether a sitting president can profit from the same manipulation.
The stark brutality of Floyd’s killing – and the fact that his eight-minute suffocation was captured on video – has curbed Mr Trump’s ability to portray the police as victims. He has veered between threats of deploying the military to quell the protests and appeals for calm.
Mr Trump’s record suggests he will not be able to resist the temptation to incite. It worked for him once.
America’s Black Lives Matter movement took off in Barack Obama’s second term just as Mr Trump was weighing up his presidential bid. “White lives matter” and “Blue lives matter” banners festooned his rallies.
But can he pull off the same feat from the White House?
That will depend on how America defines the protests. Wildly different narratives can be built from the harrowing range of video clips over the past few days.
A protester carries a US flag upside down, a sign of distress, next to a burning building on May 28, 2020, in Minneapolis. (Photo: AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Some show white police officers brutally attacking peaceful black and white marchers. Others show cops marching in solidarity with them.
Then there are the scenes of looting and burning. Mr Trump claims that most of the Minneapolis protesters are far-left radicals. Anti-Semitic memes claiming that financier George Soros is funding an army of Antifa (anti-fascist) militants have spread. Russian bots have helped disseminate the conspiracy theory.
The Trump administration has picked up that thread. In a televised statement Bill Barr, the US attorney-general, said the protests were “planned, organised and driven by anarchic and far-left extremist groups using Antifa-like tactics”.
Without evidence, Mr Trump said 80 per cent of the Minneapolis protesters were from out of state. On Sunday, he tweeted that he would designate Antifa as a “terrorist organisation”.
America now faces the spectre of a long summer of unrest, with a president stoking the polarisation. It comes amid a pandemic that has disproportionately claimed minority lives in the most densely populated areas of urban America.
Floyd’s dying words – “I can’t breathe” – serve as a metaphor for a society choking on its increasingly toxic politics.
The alternative narrative advanced by Joe Biden, Mr Trump’s opponent, is that America is crying out to be healed. Mr Biden promises to “restore America’s soul”.
If recent polls are any guide, Mr Biden’s message is hitting home. A Washington Post/ABC poll gave him a 53 per cent to 43 per cent lead over Mr Trump.
FILE PHOTO: Democratic U.S. presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the 11th Democratic candidates debate of the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign in Washington
But that snapshot was taken mostly before the protests had spread to other cities. Harking back to America’s better angels, as invoked by Abraham Lincoln, Mr Biden’s message has historic appeal.
But nations do not possess souls. They have competing ideas of themselves.
Mr Biden wants to restore the US to where it was before Mr Trump was elected – a multicultural society with its first non-white president.
Mr Trump makes little disguise of conjuring a pre-civil rights America where white males held uncontested sway. He will blame Mr Obama, China, radical leftists and “thugs” for America’s unhappy condition – anybody, in other words, but himself.
It is hard to imagine a more dystopian backdrop for the world’s most powerful democracy to settle on its future.
WASHINGTON: Police fired tear gas outside the White House late on Sunday (May 31) as protestors again took to the streets to voice fury at police brutality, and major US cities were put under curfew to suppress rioting.
With the Trump administration branding instigators of six nights of rioting as domestic terrorists, there were more confrontations between protestors and police and fresh outbreaks of looting.
Violent clashes erupted repeatedly in a small park next to the White House, with authorities using tear gas, pepper spray and flash grenades to disperse crowds who lit several large fires and damaged property.
Demonstrators protest the death of George Floyd on May 31, 2020, near the White House in Washington. (Photo: AP/Evan Vucci)
Local US leaders appealed to citizens to give constructive outlet to their rage over the death of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis, while night-time curfews were imposed in cities including Washington, Los Angeles and Houston.
One closely watched protest was outside the state capitol in Minneapolis' twin city of St Paul, where several thousand people gathered before marching down a highway.
"We have black sons, black brothers, black friends, we don't want them to die. We are tired of this happening, this generation is not having it, we are tired of oppression," said Muna Abdi, a 31-year-old black woman who joined the protest.
Tear gas rises above as protesters face off with police during a demonstration outside the White House over the death of George Floyd on May 31, 2020. (Photo: AFP/Samuel Corum)
Hundreds of police and National Guard troops were deployed ahead of the protest.
At one point, some of the protesters who had reached a bridge were forced to scramble for cover when a truck drove at speed after having apparently breached a barricade.
The driver was later taken to hospital after the protesters hauled him from the vehicle, although there were no immediate reports of other casualties.
There were other large-scale protests in cities including New York and Miami.
Washington's mayor ordered a curfew from 11pm until 6am, as a report in the New York Times said that President Donald Trump had been rushed by Secret Service agents into an underground bunker at the White House on Friday night during an earlier protest.
GUCCI, ROLEX STORES RANSACKED
Looting was reported on Sunday night in Philadelphia and the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica, and images on Fox TV showed ransacked Rolex and Gucci stores in New York City.
Officials in LA - a city scarred by the 1992 riots over the police beating of Rodney King, an African-American man - imposed a curfew from 4pm on Sunday until dawn.
"Please, use your discretion and go early, go home, stay home and help us make sure that those who want to change this conversation from being about racial justice to be about burning things and looting things, don't win the day," the city's mayor Eric Garcetti said on CNN.
A protestor throws a tear gas canister back at police during a demonstration outside the White House over the death of George Floyd on May 31, 2020. (Photo: AFP/Samuel Corum)
The shocking death last Monday of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, at the hands of police in Minneapolis ignited the nationwide wave of outrage over law enforcement's repeated use of lethal force against unarmed African Americans.
Floyd stopped breathing after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and is due to make his first appearance in court on Monday.
Late Sunday, as many were being arrested for curfew violations in Minneapolis, authorities moved Chauvin to another location from the Hennepin County Jail for his own safety, according to Minnesota's corrections commissioner.
Three other officers with him at the arrest have been fired but for now face no charges.
Governor Tim Walz has mobilised all of Minnesota's National Guard troops - the state guard's biggest mobilization ever - to help restore order and extended a curfew for a third night on Sunday.
The Department of Defense said that around 5,000 National Guard troops had been mobilised in 15 states as well as the capital Washington, with another 2,000 on standby.
The widespread resort to uniformed National Guards units is rare, and evoked disturbing memories of the rioting in US cities in 1967 and 1968 in a turbulent time of protest over racial and economic disparities.
Trump blamed the extreme left for the violence, saying he planned to designate a group known as Antifa as a terrorist organisation.
A protester has water poured on his face after being exposed to tear gas during a demonstration outside the White House over the death of George Floyd on May 31, 2020. (Photo: AFP/Samuel Corum)
"A NATION IN PAIN"
Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said Trump, who has often urged police to use tough tactics, was not helping matters.
"We are beyond a tipping point in this country, and his rhetoric only enflames that," she said on CBS.
Joe Biden, Trump's likely Democratic opponent in November's presidential election, visited the scene of one protest.
"We are a nation in pain right now, but we must not allow this pain to destroy us," Biden tweeted, posting a picture of him speaking with an African-American family at the site where protesters had gathered in Delaware late Saturday.
Floyd's death has triggered protests beyond the United States, with thousands in Montreal and London marching in solidarity on Sunday.
On the other side of the globe on Monday, thousands marched to the US consulate in Auckland chanting "no justice, no peace" and "black lives matter".
In Germany, England football international Jadon Sancho marked one of his three goals for Borussia Dortmund against Paderborn by lifting his jersey to reveal a T-shirt bearing the words "Justice for George Floyd".
MINNEAPOLIS: A tanker truck drove into protesters on interstate highway 35 West in Minneapolis, but none of the marchers were injured, according to a Reuters witness.
The driver then got out of the truck and was beaten by protesters, the Reuters witness said.
Protesters hand over to police the driver of a tanker truck who drove into thousands of protesters marching on 35W north bound highway during a protest against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US on May 31, 2020. (Photo: REUTERS/Eric Miller)
Protesters surrounded the truck and appeared to try to get into the cabin before Minneapolis police surrounded the tanker with guns drawn. The driver was then arrested.
Although there were no immediate reports of protesters being hurt, the driver himself was taken to hospital after being hauled from his vehicle, the governor of Minnesota told reporters.
"I don't know the motives of the driver at this time but at this point in time, to not have tragedy and many deaths is simply an amazing thing," Tim Walz said.
Television footage showed that several hundred protestors were on the bridge which had been closed to traffic when the truck suddenly appeared.
It was not immediately clear if the truck had breached a barricade or had been given permission to enter.
Although he did not drive straight at the bulk of the crowd, the driver showed little sign of slowing down and some of the protesters could be seen desperately running to the side of the road before the truck eventually came to a halt.
A woman is comforted after a tanker truck drove into thousands of protesters marching on 35W north bound highway during a protest against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US on May 31, 2020. (Photo: REUTERS/Eric Miller)
In a statement, the local police department said that the unnamed truck driver had been taken to hospital "with non-life threatening injuries".
"He is under arrest. It doesn't appear any protesters were hit by the truck," it added.
The footage evoked memories of the murder in 2017 of an anti-racism protester in the city of Charlottesville who was killed when a white supremacist drove his vehicle into a crowd.
Minneapolis has been the scene of large-scale protests since last Monday when a black man called George Floyd died while being arrested by a white police officer who pinned his knee on his neck for around eight minutes.
MINNEAPOLIS: Major US cities feared another night of violent protests over the death of George Floyd in police custody, cleaning up streets strewn with broken glass and burned out cars as curfews failed to stop confrontations between activists and law enforcement.
What began as peaceful demonstrations over the death of Floyd, who died as a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck, have become a wave of outrage sweeping a politically and racially divided nation.
Protesters have flooded the streets after weeks of lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic that threw millions out of work and hit minority communities especially hard.
As demonstrators broke windows and set fires, police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse crowds in many cities. In some cases, bystanders and members of the media were targeted.
In one video from Minneapolis, a National Guard Humvee rolls down a residential street followed by what appear to be police officers wearing tactical gear.
One officer orders residents to go inside, then yells "light 'em up" before shooting projectiles at a group of people on their front porch. The city's curfew does not apply to residents outside on their private property.
In New York City, police arrested about 350 people overnight and 30 officers suffered minor injuries. Mayor Bill de Blasio said police conduct was being investigated, including widely shared videos showing a police sports utility vehicle in Brooklyn lurching into a crowd of protesters who were pelting it with debris.
De Blasio said he had not seen a separate video showing an officer pulling down the mask of a black protester who had his hands in the air, then spraying a substance in his face.
The closely packed crowds and demonstrators not wearing masks sparked fears of a resurgence of COVID-19, which has killed more than 100,000 Americans.
Violence spread overnight despite curfews in several major cities rocked by civil unrest in recent days, including Atlanta, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Denver, Cincinnati, Portland, Oregon, and Louisville, Kentucky.
Philadelphia on Sunday moved the city's curfew earlier, to 6pm from 8pm local time, and ordered all businesses to close as local TXF-TV showed images of groups of protesters attacking police cars, setting one on fire while others went into nearby stores and came out with armfuls of merchandise.
Protests also flared in Chicago, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Cleveland, and Dallas, where rioters were seen on video beating a store owner who chased them with a large machete or sword. Police said on Sunday he was in a stable condition.
The clashes in Minneapolis marked the fifth night of arson, looting and vandalism in parts of the state's largest city, and its adjacent capital, St Paul. The state's governor said on Saturday that he was activating the full Minnesota National Guard for the first time since World War Two.
Thousands of people gathered on Sunday afternoon for a rally in St Paul as state troopers surrounded the state capitol building.
"There is no real one answer but the beginning is we have to learn to be honest with each other," said 66-year-old community activist Philip Holmes as he stood among demonstrators holding "Black Lives Matter" signs.
In Santa Monica, California on Sunday, hundreds of protesters marched peacefully down Ocean Avenue, parallel to the city's famed beaches. A line of police officers stood at the entrance to the Santa Monica Pier, local KTLA-TV said.
Several hundred demonstrators marching through downtown Miami stopped between the federal courthouse, FBI offices, and the federal detention center chanting "no justice, no peace." Inmates could be seen in the narrow windows waving shirts.
"DESTRUCTIVE AND UNACCEPTABLE"
About 170 stores have been looted and some burned to the ground in St Paul, its mayor said.
"We are seeing in St Paul and obviously around the country this level of rage and anger that frankly is legitimate, as we see this horrific video of George Floyd being just suffocated to death," Mayor Melvin Carter told CNN on Sunday. "Unfortunately, it's being expressed right now, over the past week, in ways that are destructive and unacceptable."
While covering the protests in Minneapolis on Saturday night, two members of a Reuters TV crew were hit by rubber bullets and a Reuters photographer's camera was smashed as attacks against journalists covering civil unrest in US cities intensified.
In response to the protests, Target Corp announced it was closing 100 stores, with about 30 in Minnesota.
The administration of President Donald Trump, who has called protesters "thugs", will not federalize and take control of the National Guard for now, national security adviser Robert O'Brien said on Sunday.
Trump said on Sunday that the US government will designate anti-fascist group Antifa as a terrorist organization. It was not clear how many, if any, of the protesters participating in demonstrations are from Antifa.
"Get tough Democrat Mayors and Governors," Trump said on Twitter on Sunday afternoon. "These people are ANARCHISTS. Call in our National Guard NOW. The World is watching and laughing at you and Sleepy Joe. Is this what America wants? NO!!!"
"Sleepy Joe" is Trump's nickname for Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for November's presidential election.
In London, protesters took to Trafalgar Square on Sunday chanting "no justice, no peace." A crowd descended on the US Embassy in Berlin calling for the police officers to face justice.
The arrest on murder charges on Friday of Derek Chauvin, the police officer seen kneeling on Floyd's neck, has failed to satisfy protesters. Three officers who stood by as Floyd died have yet to be charged.
In this file still image taken on May 25, 2020, from a video courtesy of Darnella Frazier via Facebook, shows Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin (C) arresting George Floyd. Chauvin has been arrested on May 29, 2020, days after Floyd’s fatal arrest that sparked protests, rioting and outcry across the city and nation. (Photo: Darnella Frazier/Facebook/AFP)
Floyd's name is only the latest to be chanted by protesters over the perceived lack of police accountability for violent encounters that resulted in the death of black men.
The issue ignited in 2014 with the shooting death of a black 18-year-old, Michael Brown, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, where police fired tear gas at protesters on Saturday night.
MINNEAPOLIS: Curfews were imposed on major US cities as clashes over police brutality escalated across America with demonstrators ignoring warnings from President Donald Trump that his government would stop the violent protests "cold".
Minneapolis, the epicenter of the unrest, was gripped by a fifth consecutive night of violence on Saturday (May 30) with police in riot gear firing tear gas and stun grenades at protesters venting fury at the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, during an arrest in the city on Monday.
Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta were among two dozen cities ordering people to stay indoors overnight as more states called in National Guard soldiers to help control the civil unrest not seen in the United States for years.
From Seattle to New York, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets demanding tougher murder charges and more arrests over the death of Floyd, who stopped breathing after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
An NYPD police officer argues with protesters as they clash during a march against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, U.S., May 30, 2020. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
In Los Angeles, officers fired rubber bullets and swung batons during a testy standoff with demonstrators who set fire to a police car.
Police and protesters clashed in numerous cities including Chicago and New York, with officers responding to projectiles with pepper spray while shop windows were smashed in Philadelphia.
Trump blamed the extreme left for the violence, including widespread looting and arson in Minneapolis, saying rioters were dishonoring the memory of Floyd.
"We cannot and must not allow a small group of criminals and vandals to wreck our cities and lay waste to our communities," the president said.
"My administration will stop mob violence. And we'll stop it cold," he added, accusing the loose-knit militant anti-fascist network Antifa of orchestrating the violence.
Peaceful protests occurred too, including in Toronto as the movement spread beyond America's borders.
Demonstrators nationwide chanted slogans such as "Black Lives Matter" and "I can't breathe," which Floyd, who has become a fresh symbol of police brutality, was heard saying repeatedly before he died.
"We're not turning the cheek anymore. Black lives matter. They will always matter. And we're here today to show that," said makeup artist Melissa Mock, who joined several thousand in a daytime protest in Miami.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walzs said he was mobilizing the state's entire 13,000-strong National Guard to deal with rioters who have looted shops and set fires in the Minneapolis-St Paul area.
All major freeways leading into Minneapolis were closed Saturday night with military helicopters overhead as the state braced for more rioting, arson and looting, with locals saying much of the violence was being perpetrated by outsiders.
Protesters rally against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Columbia, South Carolina, U.S., May 30, 2020. REUTERS/Sam Wolfe
Earlier, people congregated and chanted peacefully in Minneapolis, carrying brooms to help clean up damaged shops and streets.
Some placed flowers in front of the shop where Floyd was arrested on Monday, before his death in the hands of police was recorded in a horrifying cellphone video since seen around the world.
In Houston - where Floyd was born and raised - an old friend of his, Sam Osborne, said as an African American he feared for his life.
"I'm really messed up they killed him up. I'm wondering like, what could possibly happen to me?" he told AFP.
Houston's mayor announced at a press conference that Floyd's body would be brought back to the Texas city.
At least eight states - including Texas, Colorado and Georgia - activated the National Guard, who were also deployed around the White House to help handle the protests there.
"BLACK LIVES MATTER"
In Washington, protesters faced off with secret service agents outside the White House for a second straight night as Trump faces the most serious spate of civil unrest of his presidency, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
Looting occurred in Miami, where a curfew was also announced, while in New York mayor Bill de Blasio said a video appearing to show an NYPD police car drive into protesters in Brooklyn was "upsetting" but that he did not blame the officers.
In Los Angeles, the city's mayor expanded a curfew order as looting broke out. Stretched emergency services scrambled to put out the two blazes on Melrose Avenue, as similar scenes played out in Washington with officials extinguishing a major fire at a hotel off Layfayette Square.
Firefighters extinguish a barricade during a protest against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Los Angeles, California, U.S., May 30, 2020. REUTERS/Patrick T. Fallon
Protests are expected to continue even after Chauvin, the now-fired Minneapolis police officer accused of Floyd's death, was arrested and charged with third-degree murder on Friday.
Floyd's family and many protestors want a tougher charge brought and have also demanded that three officers who assisted him be charged as well.
