Manifestations against sanitary measures in Ottawa: an unprecedented police operation to dislodge truckers

A thousand agents have been deployed Friday in the Canadian capital and a hundred protesters were arrested.

by

At the beginning of the beginning of the beginning of the Ottawa headquarters organized by the movement of the Canadian truckers, the police launched, Friday, February 18, the first operations intended to overcome illegal blockages. The same morning, to ensure the safety of the deputies, the House of Commons had chosen to suspend the ongoing parliamentary debate on the Emergency Measures Act, invoked by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on February 14, to expand. powers of the police. The debates will eventually resume Saturday night the leader of the government in the House of Commons Mark Holland.

From the beginning of the morning, Friday, about a thousand police officers from seven Canadian bodies – Agents of the City of Ottawa, Ontario Province, Quebec Security, or Gendarmerie Royal Canada – supported by armored vehicles, but also by elite shooters positioned on the roofs, deployed in the city center of the Federal Capital, placed in a state of emergency. They quickly secured access to prevent any possible arrival of protesters, closing the city’s access motorway straps and introducing a hundred checkpoints.

Face-to-face tense have opposed, several hours, crown and armed police drivers descended from their cabin, to the cries of “freedom” and equipped with Canadian flags. The mounted police intervened to disperse some crowd movements. The acting leader of the Ottawa Police, Steve Bell, told that truckers had placed their children “on the front line”, as shields; These children would have been evacuated in the morning “in a safe place”

No violent confrontation

Despite an impressive police deployment – and rarely seen in Canada – it is a “slow” operation that was conducted by law enforcement, Steve Bell defending a “methodical approach”. No violent confrontation, but a reconquest meter per meter from the city center. Before proceeding with the evacuation of some 370 trucks still present in the city, the police chose to first neutralize their drivers: “A hundred protesters” arrested, announced the police in the evening, among whom were the main organizers. movement.

After the interpellation, the day before, Christopher Barber, a trucker of Saskatchewan, and Tamara Lich, self-proclaimed president of the convoy says “Freedom”, which was on the initiative of the first fundraising. More than $ 10 million in support of protesters, the Canadian far-right militant Patrick King was arrested in turn at midday. An arrest filmed and disseminated on social networks by its care, only a few moments after sending new messages to encourage “truckers to continue the fight”, and threatening the tugs, called to dislodge vehicles, retaliation. In a statement broadcast Thursday evening, the organizers of the “freedom convoy” had dissociated from Pat King, claiming that they did not encourage in “any hate rhetoric, the comments that divide and calls to violence” of the one. -Ci.

You have 47.96% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.

/Media reports.