MONTREAL (AFP) - Thousands of people gathered across Quebec on Sunday (June 7) to protest against racism and police brutality, as well as racial discrimination, in the French-speaking Canadian province.
A crowd of more than 10,000 people, according to unofficial estimates, marched in the center of Montreal, chanting, "Black Lives Matter", "No justice, no peace", "je ne peux pas respirer" ("I can't breathe") and "il faut que ca cesse" ("this has to stop").
The protest, the second in Montreal in a week, was part of a global wave of demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd, a black man killed in US police custody when a white officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
During speeches before the start of the march, organisers slammed Quebec's prime minister Francois Legault for claiming a few days prior that there was no "systemic racism" in the province.
Protester Madani Ba, a 28-year-old musician and artist, told AFP that he once was subjected to two different identity checks in the span of five minutes on the same street. "There's a lot of racial profiling, ask anyone of colour and they will tell you the same thing. It's unbelievable - and it has to change," he said.
Jessica Francois, 29, said she had come to the protests to show that "the colour of your skin does not justify the inequalities we can see, for instance, in Quebec".
Demonstrators marched peacefully and were asked to stop several times to kneel in memory of George Floyd. Last Sunday, clashes had broken out during the Montreal protest.
While many protesters wore masks, it was hard to maintain social distancing of two meters, particularly while waiting for the march to begin.
More protests took place in Sherbrooke, east of Montreal, and in provincial capital Quebec City. Other demonstrations had occurred Saturday in Toronto, and other cities across the country.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined thousands in Ottawa on Friday. He knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the same length of time that Officer Derek Chauvin had kept his knee on George Floyd's neck.
"Over the past weeks, we've seen a large number of Canadians suddenly awaken to the fact that the discrimination that is a lived reality for far too many of our fellow citizens is something that needs to end," Trudeau said earlier that day during his daily briefing.
