The man accused of murdering her is a member of the same police force.
A series of evening vigils by the organizers “Reclaim These Streets” was planned for Saturday across the UK. The main event, at Clapham Common, was canceled after the Met said it could not go ahead, citing restrictions on the coronavirus. Organizers asked people to light their doorsteps instead of Everard and all the women affected and lost by the violence.
But in the evening, peaceful mourners gathered for the socially distant event in Clapham. Participants shouted, “This is a vigil, we don’t need your services.”
Less than an hour after the meeting began, police officers advanced to inform people that they were violating Covid-19 regulations and needed to leave. Then, a predominantly male grouping of police officers moved in, using containment and cornering techniques – where policemen surround protesters to keep them in a certain place, making social detachment impossible – ordering people to leave, or face jail and fines. .
While police officers forcibly removed women from the bandstand and threw others with their faces to the floor in the prison, participants shouted “What a shame”, “Hold yours” and “Who do you protect?”
In a statement on Sunday morning, the Metropolitan Police said that “it absolutely did not want to be in a position where repression action was necessary”, but that “we were placed in this position because of the imperative need to protect people’s safety”.
Interior Minister Victoria Atkins addressed a now viral photograph of one of the women who were arrested by police officers during an interview on Sky News on Sunday morning, saying it is “something that the police will have to explain in that report to the Minister of the Interior. “
Atkins added that the “very disturbing scenes” were being “taken very seriously” by the British government.
His comments come as videos on social media and news agencies continue to emerge, showing participants fighting with the police.
Several British party division leaders agreed that the police response was disproportionately harsh.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said on Twitter that “the scenes of Clapham Common are unacceptable. The police have a responsibility to enforce Covid laws, but from the images I saw it is clear that the response was sometimes neither appropriate nor proportional “, adding that he was in contact with the Commissioner and” looking for an urgent explanation “.
Labor Party leader Keir Starmer called the scenes at Clapham “deeply disturbing”.
“Women came together to mourn Sarah Everard – they should have been able to do this peacefully,” he said, adding that he shared his “anger and annoyance at the way it was handled.”
“That was not the way to police this protest,” said Starmer.
Liberal Democratic party leaders agreed, joining an ever-growing chorus that called for the resignation of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. “Cressida Dick has lost the confidence of millions of women in London and should resign,” said Liberal Democrats, saying that policing the vigil was “utterly shameful and shameful for the Metropolitan Police.”
UK Interior Secretary Priti Patel said “some” images that were circulating online were “disturbing” and said she asked the Met for a “full report on what happened”.
Patels’ comments, however, are unfolding in a landscape that is becoming increasingly hostile to dissident voices – which disproportionately affects marginalized communities, including women.
The Interior Minister did not hide her plans to crack down on dissidents, calling environmental protesters “ecocruzes who have become criminals” with the intention of attacking the British way of life and labeling the tactics of Black Lives Matter demonstrators as “banditry” in two different speeches last fall.
And while Patel said that the government will always “defend the right to protest,” his actions suggest otherwise.
Protecting women
In the meantime, the government is conducting an “end-to-end” review of the criminal justice system, according to Atkins, including changes in the sentences of serious and violent offenders.
The minister called the Domestic Abuse Bill “a legislative framework”, which will start a “conversation about abusive behavior and what we can do to support victims, but also to combat perpetrators,” she said, adding that the government is investing “. unprecedented amounts of money” also for criminal programs.
But Jess Phillips, the UK’s shadow home minister, said the government should “turn its rhetoric into action”, noting that the bill mentions more statues than women.
More than 70% of women interviewed by a new UN survey Women in the UK said they had experienced sexual harassment in public spaces. That number rose to 97% among women aged 18 to 24, the survey showed. The data, released on Wednesday, were taken from a YouGov survey of more than 1,000 women commissioned by the United Nations Women in the United Kingdom in January 2021.
The organization’s research also suggested that women have little faith in public institutions to deal with the situation.
“Only 4% of women told us that they reported harassment incidents to an official organization – with 45% of women saying that they did not believe that the complaint would help change anything,” said UN Women in the United Kingdom.
CNN’s Nina Dos Santos, Arnaud Siad and Laura Smith-Spark contributed to this report.