Ottawa police confirmed on Sunday (20.02.2022) that they arrested 191 people and filed charges against 103 of them during their operation to disperse the anti-vaccine demonstration in the center of the Canadian capital. The last big trucks are being towed out of the town, which is quiet for the first time in three weeks.
The demonstrators, led by truckers, were finally completely expelled from the outskirts of Parliament, the epicenter of the protest. The last of the protesters stayed late into the night on Saturday, singing 1980s protest anthems and firing fireworks past a four-metre-high security fence that has been hastily erected around the parliament complex.
But the protest turned into a street party that eventually died down when a severe frost gripped the city. Ottawa Police have issued a reminder to close this perimeter to all traffic, except for local residents and workers. By mid-morning, he had reported that two people had been arrested, bringing the number of detainees to 191.
A total of 89 of these detainees “have been released under conditions” which include the prohibition to approach certain areas, while the others have already been released unconditionally, they added. He also said that so far 57 vehicles have been towed out of the city, which has been paralyzed since hundreds of trucks, vans and other vehicles were parked there in protest on January 29.
Although Canada’s pandemic health measures have been eased as the number of cases tends to decline, protesters have pledged to push for the full lifting of restrictions, which are among the strictest in the world. “We are using fencing to make sure we don’t lose the ground we have gained,” police said on their official Twitter account.
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