G20 Protester dies at the City Demo

The G20 protests have claimed their first death.

A man "fell over and became unconscious, prompting a member of the public to call emergency services, a spokeswoman for the London Ambulance Service said."

"He was still breathing at the time but soon stopped, and despite attempts to resuscitate him, later died."

"It was not clear how the man died, but some people had earlier been injured when protesters held in a police cordon for several hours following the march surged against the crash barriers."

While no further information is available just now it must be asked if this man's death might have been caused directly or indirectly by the Police penning-in and detaining demonstraters who wished to leave and go home. Up to seven hours, in the City and at Bishopsgate at the Climate Change demo, protesters were prevented from leaving by the Police using Stop and Search Anti-Terror laws. People were only allowed to leave one-by-one after being stopped, searched and having their identities taken.

As well as this there have been several reports of Police brutality, the unneccesary and provocative use of truncheons against non-violent individuals and peaceful demonstrators being kicked. No doubt other instances of Police violence will emerge in time.

All this courtesy of the Metropolitan Police, the police force that murdered John Charles de Menezies and were let off the hook by a whitewash inquiry. The Metropolitan police should consider itself lucky to be dealing with relatively docile British protesters. If this had been on the Continent there would, no doubt, have been greater violence.

And yet the UK Police are becoming evermore violent and authoritarian, thanks to politicians who seem determined to turn Britain into a full-blown police state. How many more deaths, I wonder, before G20 ends?

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