George Floyd's final words, "I can't breathe," before he died from asphyxiation after a white police officer knelt on his neck while detaining him on 25 May, are reverberating in cities across Europe.

Thousands of people in countries including the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Greece, Ireland, Poland, Sweden and others, have taken to the streets in anti-racism protests as a show of solidarity with protesters in the U.S., but also to echo calls for an end to racial injustice and police brutality globally.

"What's happening now is that George Floyd's death is resonating in Europe, because it's also connected to ongoing movements and activism against police violence in those societies," Jean Beaman, professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told CGTN Europe.

"Black people in a lot of societies recognize how interconnected their struggles are, so what you're seeing here is this sort of momentum towards making these transnational connections," Beaman added.

As protests continue to flare up in the U.S., and fears resound around how police forces are quashing demonstrations, as well as President Donald Trump threatening to send in the military to quell some of the violence and looting taking place on the sidelines of the protests, leaders across Europe have voiced their concerns.

The European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said on Tuesday: "Like the people of the United States, we are shocked and appalled by the death of George Floyd." Adding it was "an abuse of power" and warning that "all societies must remain vigilant against the excessive use of force."
 

'It's also here'

But while condemnation rang out about the state of affairs in the U.S. from leaders across Europe, many joining solidarity protests in European capitals pointed out that it wasn't just an American issue, but that police brutality and racism were taking place in Europe, too.

Jean Beaman, whose research looks at these issues in France and makes comparisons with the U.S. said: "There's a geographical distancing that people in France, people in the UK, people in other Western European societies make by saying that racism isn't here, it's over there. 

"So, what's frustrating for people who are involved in these anti-racist movements and movements against police violence is saying, 'no, it's not just over there, it's also here.'"

Protests broke out in the French capital, defying police orders, voicing support for the Black Lives Matter movement and in solidarity with George Floyd, but also against police brutality in the country. The protesters, who were tear-gassed by police forces, brandished signs demanding justice for Adama Traoré, a young black Frenchman who died while in police custody in 2016 – an incident that has drawn parallels with Floyd's killing, as some of Traoré's last words were also, "I can't breathe."

Traoré's family have blamed excessive force used during his arrest, when the 24-year-old was pinned down by three gendarmes. Successive pathology reports have reached conflicting conclusions over whether his death two hours later resulted from asphyxiation or other factors including pre-existing conditions. But his family and rights groups in the country continue to demand justice, saying it is part of an ongoing pattern of police brutality and heavy-handedness against racial and ethnic minorities in France that is being swept under the carpet.

Across the channel in the UK, similar issues were raised. Protests in the capital, London, and other cities across the country, were held in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and called for justice for George Floyd. But protesters also held signs reading "the UK is not innocent."

Scholar-activist and founder of the pan-Africa human rights organization Ligali, Toyin Agbetu, told CGTN Europe that it "gets frustrating" to have to keep making that point. "In the UK, there are so many defenses that come up from those who oppose people challenging these racist behaviors."

He added: "So you'll hear things like 'all lives matter,' or you'll hear things like 'deaths in custody don't happen because police officers don't carry guns in the UK.' Well, all of this is wrong, actually, police officers do carry guns, just not the routine police officer on the street, they have an armed response unit."

Protesters in the UK held signs referring to cases in the country involving deaths in police custody, the names included Sean Rigg and Rashan Charles, among many others.

Similarities were drawn between George Floyd and Sean Rigg's case in 2008, as 40-year-old Rigg, who had schizophrenia, was restrained in the prone position by three officers for more than seven minutes and later died after suffering a heart attack.

Although an inquest heard that the Metropolitan Police officers had used an amount of force deemed "unsuitable" for an "excessive" period, and that they had instigated a "cover-up," the five officers were cleared of misconduct by a police disciplinary panel.

In 2017, 20-year-old Rashan Charles also lost his life after being restrained by a police officer and choking on a package of caffeine and paracetamol in his mouth. Leaked video footage of the arrest went viral and also led to protests that year. But the inquest into Charles's case, too, cleared the arresting officers of responsibility. The families in both cases, however, said they will continue to call for justice.

British charity Inquest said that "to date there have been 1,741 deaths in police custody or otherwise following contact with the police in England and Wales since 1990," and that "14 percent" of these deaths were of people from Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.

The charity added that "the proportion of BAME deaths in custody where use of force is a feature is over two times greater than it is in other deaths in custody."

According to a report from the UK Statistics Authority and the Independent Office for Police Conduct, almost five percent of deaths during or following police contact in 2018/19 in England and Wales, were of people with black ethnicity.

However, the last time a police officer was successfully prosecuted in the UK concerning the death of somebody in custody was in 1969.

In Germany, which hosted one of the earliest protests in Europe following the death of George Floyd, similar issues arise. According to research in 2019 from the Ruhr University in Bochum, scientists assume there are at least 12,000 allegedly illegal attacks by police officers every year – five times as many cases as previously reported. Sixteen percent of respondents in the study were of a migrant background.

There are at least 2,000 suspected unlawful assaults by police per year, which are dealt with by the public prosecutor's offices. According to the research, the incidents are rarely prosecuted under criminal law, as less than two percent of all investigations result in legal proceedings. In contrast, 20 percent of cases in investigations into bodily injury usually end up in court – ten times more than in cases of accused members of the police force.

Elsewhere in Europe, the statistics on racist violence, including assault by a police officer, show how widespread the issue is for black people in particular.

According to the Being Black in the EU report by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), which surveyed more than 5,800 people in 12 EU member states in 2018, "five percent of respondents said they experienced a racist attack (including assault by a police officer) in the five years before the survey. In the same period, 127 respondents (two percent) – mainly young men – experienced a racist assault by a police officer."

However, two-thirds (64 percent) of victims of racist violence, as well as 63 percent of victims of racist physical attacks by police officers, did not report the most recent incident to any organization – either because they felt reporting it would not change anything (34 percent) or because victims did not trust or were afraid of the police (28 percent), according to the report.

'These issues are structural'

"Across the EU, people of African descent face widespread and entrenched prejudice and exclusion. Racial discrimination and harassment are commonplace. Experiences with racist violence vary, but reach as high as 14 percent. Discriminatory profiling by the police is a common reality," the FRA said in its report, pointing to a more systemic issue.

Nearly a third of black Europeans had experienced racist harassment in the five years preceding the report's release, while one-quarter of those surveyed said they were stopped by police in the last four years. Among these, four in 10 characterized the most recent stop as racial profiling.

Peaceful protesters who came out in Europe following the death of Gerorge Floyd, highlighted allegations of abuse of black prisoners by their jailers, social and economic inequality, and institutional racism lingering from the colonial pasts of the Netherlands, Britain and France.

"The struggle here is not just recognizing individual incidents, but it's also demonstrating or documenting to the wider public that these are structural concerns and this is a systemic problem within the police," University of California professor Beaman said.

"Part of the ongoing work is reminding people of these connections and ... thinking about this as a global problem, a global structural problem of well, one, white supremacy and also just anti-black violence," Beaman explained. She added that "the other part of thinking about these killings, or about police violence is keeping in mind the connection between actual deaths and just general police harassment or general hyper-surveillance by the police. In particular, communities and how that impacts people even if they're not actually targeted."

In France, conversations about how contrôle d'identité, or identity checks, by the police disproportionately target those from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds, are ongoing. Beaman said this aggregation "reinforces a message from the state that you don't belong."

These issues are also apparent in the UK, where, according to official government figures, between April 2018 and March 2019, there were four stop-and-searches on white people for every 1,000, compared with 38 on black people for every 1,000 – meaning black people were nine-and-a-half times more likely to be stopped and searched in this period, an increase from the previous year. 

Many who have come out in anti-racism protests across Europe, undeterred by coronavirus lockdowns and bans on mass gatherings in several cities, say the pandemic has in fact highlighted the racial injustices in their societies.

Ligali's Agbetu said: "The fact that this has happened during the pandemic is quite poignant." He explained: "It's quite revealing of the problems, the structural ingrained problems that have been affecting Africans and Asians and all other minority ethnic groups in environments where there is the presence of white supremacy and structural racism."

Activists in the UK, France and other countries accused the police of unfairly targeting black people during COVID-19 lockdowns implemented to stop the spread of the virus.

A recent study by Liberty Investigates and The Guardian news site in the UK found that black, Asian and minority ethnic people in England are 54 percent more likely to be fined under coronavirus rules than white people. 

So, while the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police did take place thousands of kilometers away, its impact is continuing to reverberate across Europe and is connecting movements against police brutality and racism, unifying calls around the world that "black lives matter."

Video editor: Sam Cordell