The last demonstrators stayed until Saturday night, singing protest hymns from the 1980s and setting off fireworks in front of a four-meter-high security fence that covered Congress, until a strong frost fell on the city. .
This morning, police guarded several checkpoints that restricted access to some 200 hectares of downtown Ottawa, while a heavy deployment of security forces occupied the land gained from truckers, according to the AFP news agency.
The Ottawa police authorized circulation in that central perimeter of the capital only for local residents and workers.
At mid-morning there were 191 people arrested for violating the provision and 57 vehicles towed out of the city, paralyzed since last January 29 by hundreds of trucks, vans and other vehicles that were parked there in rejection of sanitary measures.
While the health provisions were eased as the number of cases began to drop, protesters vowed to push for them to be removed altogether.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is facing a lawsuit from a civil liberties association and criticism from opponents over its decision to invoke emergency powers.
The “freedom convoy”, that inspired similar protests in other countries, began last January with a demonstration by truckers against the requirement to be vaccinated to cross the border with the United States, but their demands later extended to the rejection of all health measures due to the pandemic.
On the 7th of this month, after a week of blockades of hundreds of truckers on the streets, the authorities of Ottawa, the epicenter of the protests, declared a state of emergency.
The next day, protesters blocked border crossings with the United States, especially the Ambassador Bridge, a key trade route between the two countries.
On Friday the 11th, the authorities declared a state of emergency in Ontario, the province where Ottawa is located, but the mobilization did not subside.
Last Monday, in the face of paralysis, Trudeau invoked the Emergency Measures Act to end the demonstrations and blockades, and the freezing of the bank accounts of some protesters.
A day later, Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly resigned in the face of strong criticism for his management, and on Friday hundreds of police officers were deployed in the streets of the capital to evict protesters.
This Saturday, in the biggest offensive to end the protest, police retook control of part of downtown Ottawa with batons and “irritating substances,” smashing truck windows, seizing weapons, and arresting dozens of recalcitrant protesters.
The truckers won the support of US billionaire Elon Musk, several Republican lawmakers, as well as former President Donald Trump and even former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Yet polls showed that Canadians, once largely sympathetic to the trucker-led movement, are now rejecting it.
Source: Ambito
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