Canada: Police Take Back Ottawa After Ending Trucker Blockades; there are 191 detainees

The last big trucks were being towed out of the capital of Canadawhich was calm for the first time in three weeks after a police operation ended a long protest against health regulations over the coronavirus.

Workers were busy cleaning the snowy streets of downtown Ottawawhere riot police staged two days of clashes with protesters led by truckers, to finally evict them completely from the outskirts of Parliament, the epicenter of the protest.

SIGHT: Canada: Police intervene truckers protest in Ottawa and arrest more than 100 protesters

The last of the protesters stayed late into the night on Saturday, singing protest anthems from the 1980s and launching fireworks in front of a four meter high security fence that has been hastily erected around the parliamentary compound.

But the protest that became a street party finally perished when a strong frost took over the city.

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On Sunday morning, police manned several checkpoints that restricted access to a wide area of ​​downtown Ottawa -some 200 hectares-, while a strong deployment of security forces occupied the land gained from the truckers.

Ottawa Police issued a traffic ban reminder in that perimeter except for local residents and workers.

By mid-morning he had reported that two people had been arrested, thus the number of detainees rose to 191.

He also said that so far 57 vehicles have been towed out of the cityparalyzed since on January 29 hundreds of trucks, vans and other vehicles parked there in protest.

A truck is towed away as police begin to clear protesters against vaccination mandates in Ottawa, Canada, on February 18, 2022. (ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP)

Meanwhile, cleanup crews tore down the last of the tents, food stalls and other makeshift structures by protesters, and shoveled mounds of snow from streets to prepare for the reopening of local businesses.

AND For the first time in weeks, Ottawa residents weren’t startled awake by incessant honkingwhich had become a staple of the protests.

Keep fighting

After being evicted, many protesters told AFP that they would continue to fight for their cause.

Although the pandemic health measures in Canada have softened as the number of cases tends to decline, protesters have vowed to push for the restrictions to be completely liftedwhich are among the strictest in the world.

Meanwhile, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faces a lawsuit from an association for the defense of civil liberties and criticism from his political rivals for his decision to invoke rarely used emergency powers to suppress the protests.

Police and city employees clean up Wellington Street across from Parliament Hill, formerly occupied by the Freedom Convoy, in Ottawa. (Andrej Ivanov / AFP).

Polls show that Canadians, once largely sympathetic to the trucker-led movement, are now rejecting it.

The so-called “Freedom Convoy” began a month ago as a protest against the obligation to be vaccinated against covid-19 to cross the United States border.

Over the days, it gained followers and inspired similar protests in other countries, such as France. Now Washington is bracing for a possible trucker protest to coincide with next week’s State of the Union address.

the convoy in Canada generated blockades at border crossings that had an economic impact on both sides of the border. The police cleared them out a week ago.

Dozens of people were arrested in these operations, including at least three protest leaders, and 32 million Canadian dollars in donations and bank accounts linked to the truckers’ movement were frozen.

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Source: Elcomercio