Thousands of people gathered in Stockholm and Helsinki on Wednesday for demonstrations against racism, which were gradually dissolved by the police due to restrictions imposed by the authorities to fight the coronavirus.
In Stockholm, several thousand demonstrators, often young and some wearing a health mask, peacefully gathered in the early evening in the Swedish capital - anti-racism slogans and signs in hand, painted with the name of George Floyd, an Afro- American deceased nine days ago after his arrest by the American police. Cries of rallying against the Democrats of Sweden, the Swedish far-right party, were also heard. The police, however, gradually dissolved the demonstration due to the limitation of gatherings set at 50 people in the country for health reasons.
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Faced with a crowded Sergel square, the police told AFP that they had asked the organizers, authorized to demonstrate, to urge the crowd to leave in order to comply with the restrictions imposed. Most of the protesters continued the protest through the streets of Stockholm and in city parks, in scattered order.
According to an AFP-TV journalist present on the scene in the middle of the evening, the police had to repel demonstrators outside the royal palace using pepper spray. The same gas was allegedly used against other groups of protesters elsewhere in the city, according to Swedish media reports on Wednesday evening of two arrests.
Among the striking images of the evening, a policewoman, taken to task in her service vehicle, went out there to put one knee on the ground, her fist raised, as a sign of support for the demonstrators, who quickly embraced her.
" There is racism everywhere "
Earlier in the day, in the Finnish capital Helsinki, some 3,000 people had peacefully gathered, chanting slogans such as " Black lives matter " ( " the lives of blacks account ") or displaying placards " I can not breathe " (" I can't breathe "). Omar, originally from Gambia and living in Finland for 16 years, told AFP that he joined the demonstration to show that racial discrimination is not just a problem in the United States. “ Even in Finland, there is racism everywhere, in bars, nightclubs, buses, shopping malls, everywhere. So this is something we have been fighting for for many years, ”he said.
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At the foot of the large white Lutheran cathedral in Helsinki, on Senate Square, the demonstration, which was to last 4 hours, was quickly dissolved. The rallies being limited to 500 people because of the coronavirus, after an hour, the police asked the organizers to end the event.
The death of the 46-year-old African-American George Floyd killed by a white police officer on May 25 has sparked numerous protests around the world and an outbreak of violence in many cities in the United States.
