Canadian police arrest 2 anti-COVID leaders to end truck protests

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Hundreds of Truckers crowding Canada’s capital held their ground and blew their horns on Thursday, even as police arrested two protest leaders and threatened to break up up the nearly three-week demonstration against the country’s COVID-19 restrictions.

Bus charges of police arrived near Ottawa’s Parliament Hill and workers put up additional fences around government buildings. Police also basically started sealing off many of downtown area to strangers to prevent them from helping of the protesters.

“Action is imminent,” said Acting Ottawa Police Chief Steve Bell. “We are absolutely determined to put an end to this illegal protest.”

Police arrested organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber around Parliament Hill, but officers were not moving in force on the protesters. Police took Lich in custody Thursday night.

The police continued negotiations with the protesters and trying to persuade them to go home, says Bell. “We want this protest is ending peacefully,” he said, but added”If they don’t leave peacefully, we have plans.”

Numerous of the truckers in the so-called Freedom Convoy appeared unresponsive for days of warnings from the police and the government that they risked arrest and could see their rigs seized and bank frozen accounts.

“I’m ready to sit on my ass and look at them hit me with pepper spray,” said one of their leaders, Pat King. As for the trucks parked bumper to bumper, he said, “There are no tow trucks in Canada that will affect them.

King then told the truckers to lock their doors.

In the middle of the rising tensions, truckers outside Parliament honked its horns in challenge of a court order against honking, emitted for earnings of neighborhood residents.

Ottawa represented the movement last fortress after weeks of demonstrations and blockages that shut down border crossings into the United States, have caused economic damage on both countries and created a political crisis for Trudeau.

Protests have rocked Canada reputation for civility and rule-following and inspired by similar convoys in France, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

” He is grand until these illegal and dangerous activities stop,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. in Parliament, not far from where more more than 300 trucks were parked.

“They are one menace for our economy and our relationship with trading partners,” he said. “They are one menace for public safety.”

Ottawa police began locking down down a wide band of the downtown areaallowing in only those who live Where work afterwards they pass by one of more over 100 points of control, the acting chief said.

The police were particularly concerned about the children among the protesters. Bell said police were working with agencies protection of childhood to determine how remove youngsters safely before authorities move in.

At the start of the week, the prime minister invoked Canada’s Emergencies Act, authorizing law enforcement authorities to declare blockades illegal, tow trucks, arrest the driverssuspend their licenses and take other action.

Thursday, Trudeau and some of his main ministers took turns warning demonstrators leaving, in an apparent move speak government to avoid a confrontation, or at least show he had gone the extra mile to avoid one.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said that government began freezing the accounts of threatened truckers. “It’s happening. I have the numbers in of face of me,” she said.

The Ottawa police also handed over out leaflets for the second day in a row demanding that the truckers end the siege, and also well-placed reviews on vehicles inform the owners how and or pick up their trucks if towed.

The occupation has infuriated many Ottawa residents.

people bullied, harassed and threatened. We’ve seen apartment buildings that’s been chained down up. We saw fires set in corridors. Residents are terrified,” said Canadian Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.

The protests of the demonstrators in trucks, tractors and engines homes initially concentrated on Canadian vaccine requirements for truckers entering the country, but soon transformed into a larger attack on COVID-19 and Trudeau precautions government.

most grandthe most damaging of blockades at the border took place at the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit. Before the authorities arrested dozens of protesters last weekend and lifted the siege he disrupted the flow of auto parts in between countries and forced the industry to reduce production.

the final blockade, in Manitoba, ended peacefully on Wednesday.

The movement has drawn support right-wing extremists and veterans, some of them armed – one reason the authorities hesitated to move against their.

Fox News personalities and American conservatives like Donald Trump have pushed on the protests. Trudeau complained on Thursday that “roughly half of the funding for the barricaders here comes from the United States.

Some security experts said the dispersal of the protest in Ottawa could be tricky and dangerous, with the potential for violence, and that a heavy-handed law enforcement response could be used as propaganda by anti-government extremists.

The trucks were parked side by side downtown, some with tires removed interfere with towing.

“There really isn’t a playbook,” said David Carter, a professor at Michigan State University School of justice criminal and a former police officer. “I know there are police chiefs in the United States is studying this and developing strategies plans and partnerships to manage an event like this if he should occur in their cities.

The presence of children also complicated Planning. Like a showdown appeared to be approaching, Canada’s Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said: “To those who to have children with them, it’s not place for children. take them home immediately.”

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