The man accused of murdering her is a member of the same police force.
A series of “Reclaim These Streets” nightly vigils had been planned across the UK on Saturday. The main event, at Clapham Common, was canceled after Met said they could not go ahead, citing coronavirus restrictions. Organizers asked people to shed light on their doors for Everard and for all the women affected and lost by the violence.
But as night fell, evil pacifists gathered for the socially distanced event in Clapham. Attendees chanted, “This is a vigil, we don’t need your services.”
Less than an hour after the rally began, officers moved to inform people that they were in violation of Covid-19 regulations and that they had to leave. Then, a predominantly male group of officers was installed using containment and corralling techniques, where officers surrounded the protesters to keep them in a certain place, making social distancing impossible, ordering people to leave. or face arrests and fines.
As police officers forcibly removed the women from the kiosk and dropped others to the ground, attendees chanted “Shame,” “Arrest Yours,” and “Who Are You Protecting?”
In a statement Sunday morning, Met police said they “absolutely did not want to be in a position where enforcement action was needed,” but “placed us in that position because of the urgent need to protect safety.” of the people “.
Home Secretary Victoria Atkins directed a now viral photograph of one of the women who had been captured by police officers during an interview with Sky News on Sunday morning, saying that “it’s something the police will have to do. to explain in this report to the Home Secretary “.
Atkins added that the British government was “taking very seriously” the “very annoying scenes”.
His comments come as videos on social media and news agencies continue to surface, showing attendees fighting with police.
Several British leaders of party divisions have agreed that the police response was disproportionately harsh.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said on Twitter that “the Clapham Common scenes are unacceptable. The police have a responsibility to enforce the Covid laws, but from the images I’ve seen it’s clear that the response was not neither adequate nor proportionate “in contact with the commissioner and” urgently seeking an explanation “.
Labor leader Keir Starmer called the Clapham scenes “deeply disturbing”.
“The women came together to mourn Sarah Everard: they should have been able to do it peacefully,” she said, adding that she shared her “anger and displeasure at the way this was handled.”
“That wasn’t the way to control this protest,” Starmer said.
Liberal-Democratic party leaders agreed and joined a growing chorus that has called on the metropolitan police commissioner to resign. “Cressida Dick has lost the trust of millions of women in London and should resign,” Liberal Democrats said, saying the vigil police were “totally embarrassing and embarrassing to the metropolitan police”.
UK Home Secretary Priti Patel said “some” of the images circulating online were “annoying” and said she had asked the Met for a “full report on what happened”.
Patels’s comments, however, take place in a landscape increasingly hostile to dissenting voices, which disproportionately affects marginalized communities, including women.
The Home Secretary has said nothing about his plans to crack down on dissent, and has called environmental protesters “eco-Croats turned criminals” with the intention of attacking a British way of life and labeling tactics of Black Lives Matter protesters as “thugs”. different speeches last fall.
And while Patel has said the government will always “defend the right to protest,” his actions suggest otherwise.
Safeguarding women
Meanwhile, according to Atkins, the government has conducted a “end-to-end” review of the criminal justice system, including changes in the conviction of serious and violent offenders.
The minister described the Domestic Abuse Act as “relevant legislation” that will initiate a “conversation about abusive behavior and what we can do to support victims, but also to combat perpetrators,” she said, adding that the government was investing “unprecedented amounts of money” also in author programs.
But Jess Phillips, the UK Home Secretary, said the government should “turn its rhetoric into action”, noting that the bill mentions statues more than women.
More than 70% of women surveyed by a new UN Women UK survey said they had experienced sexual harassment in public spaces. That figure rose to 97 percent among women ages 18 to 24, the survey showed. The data, released on Wednesday, has been extracted from a YouGov survey of more than 1,000 women commissioned by UN Women UK in January 2021.
Surveys of the organization also suggested that women had little faith in public institutions to deal with the situation.
“Only 4% of women told us they reported incidents of harassment to an official organization; 45% of women said they didn’t think reporting would help change anything,” UN Women UK said.
CNN’s Nina Dos Santos, Arnaud Siad and Laura Smith-Spark contributed to this report.