Protests over George Floyd’s death spread to New Zealand
International protests over George Floyd’s death spread Monday.
Tens of thousands of people gathered in New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, to protest the caught-on-video death of the unarmed black man in an alleged case of police brutality in Minnesota on May 25, the Guardian reported.
Protesters knelt in front of the US consulate in Auckland while carrying signs that repeated what Floyd gasped while cop Derek Chauvin was kneeling on his neck for nearly 9 minutes — “I can’t breathe.”
The demonstrators said they also were marching to protest what they called widespread and systemic racist treatment of indigenous groups in their own country.
Several other similar protests also took place around New Zealand.
But organizers of a planned protest in Sydney, Australia, on Tuesday called off their march — saying they feared the same kind of violence wracking the US, including New York City, over Floyd’s death.
“There’s no need to import things … happening in other countries here to Australia,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Sydney Radio 2GB on Monday, according to CBS.
Protests are still scheduled in Australia on Saturday.