#BlackLivesMatter is no longer merely a domestic civil rights movement, it is now a robust international human rights campaign against discriminatory policing with tens of thousands of ardent supporters. Alexei Navalny’s courageous hunger strike and the ensuing protests and arrests of thousands took place in the shadow of the Derek Chauvin trial. Both events can only be properly construed under the broad and increasingly relevant category of human rights
Policing, itself, is now in a moral reckoning. “We mourn for his loss and now must turn our attention to justice reform so that others do not suffer the same fate. This cannot, and will not, be the end of our fight for #justice and #humanrights for all,” the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights tweeted. “George Floyd’s murder is a symptom of systemic racism and the militarization of law enforcement. And so, we must adopt a community-centred approach to policing and break down the legislative barriers that, for too long, have led to widespread racial injustice and oppression.”
Abuses within the United States criminal justice system are now regularly covered by foreign news organizations and social media commentators across the globe. Rallies for justice for George Floyd were held from Kampala, Uganda to Tunis; from Hong Kong to Prague; from Gdansk, Poland to Malmo, Sweden. “Solidarity marches and gatherings took place from Sydney to Beirut to Istanbul to London to Berlin,” wrote Borzou Daragahi in The Atlantic Council. ” Black Lives Matter, a slogan and hashtag coined some seven years ago in the United States to draw attention to police abuses against African Americans, trended globally on social-media networks and among protesters on the streets.” Images of last summer’s uprising in Minnesota went global.
