Rally held in UK to support US teen

Protesters in the British capital of London have staged a rally outside the American embassy to express solidarity with an African-American teenager who was shot dead by a US police officer in Ferguson, Press TV reports.

The Wednesday development came while people across the world have been witness over last few weeks to the tragic police shooting death of Michael Brown and the subsequent crackdown on protests in the city of Ferguson in the Midwestern State of Missouri.

This week, as Michael Brown was finally laid to rest, supporters in Britain held a solidarity protest outside the US embassy.

“It is shocking to see an 18-year-old young man… being shot by a police officer [while] unarmed… and justice is not still given to him,” said Seyman Bennett of United Against Fascism, who was among the crowd of protesters.

The killing of British Mark Duggan by police caused riots in England in 2011. He was also a black man killed by a white police officer.

Since 1990, there have been about 1,500 deaths in police custody – yet not one policeman has ever been convicted for these deaths.

“We actually feel the pain… Another person has been killed on the streets in America and it’s just so similar to when Mike Duggan was shot [in Britain] and people rioted here for the very same reason, so you see the anger is the same and the pain is the same,” said another protester, Marcia Riggs, whose brother Sean died in police custody in the UK in 2008.

“My brother has been dead for six years and we’re still fighting for some kind of justice and I don’t think people understand the real agony that families have to go through,” she added.

MFB/HJL/HMV