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Police brutality on British-Pakistanis provoke protests in Manchester

News Desk

•
Jul 25

Several videos of an armed UK cop holding a taser over a man lying face down on the floor are going viral on social media. The cop can be seen striking the man twice while other officers shout at onlookers in Manchester Airport.

Onlookers can be heard shouting in the video as the cops proceed to kick and stamp on the man’s heads. The chaotic scene continued as another person is heard yelling “move back”, while a female officer is seen turning her taser towards other individuals present.


Other voices in the video plead, “Stop kicking people”, and a slew of expletives as multiple officers surround the men on the ground.


Reports suggest the men being beaten by police officers are British Pakistanis.

Videos of two young men who were arrested and then released by the police have also emerged online. Their lawyer has confirmed that Fahir and Ammad were assaulted by the police at the airport in front of their mother who could be seen protecting one of them in the video that went viral. The lawyer claimed that they were arrested by the police and upon their release they themselves went to the hospital for first-aid whereas it was the duty of the police to provide them with medical help. The lawyer stressed that a “complaint has been filed against the police officers that have assaulted both Fahir and Amaad and their elderly mother who was just there as a bystander”.


The same Twitter thread claimed that someone at the airport had hit the trolley of the boys’ mother, and this escalated a fight, adding that the boys were released by the police because of the lack of evidence.


Dawn’s Atika Rehman reports that the incident happened on Wednesday afternoon (July 24).


Greater Manchester Police responded to the viral video by saying that an armed officer had been attacked while attempting to arrest someone, following a fight in Terminal 2 of the airport on Tuesday.


Police issued a statement following the release of the video on social media that four men were arrested at the scene on suspicion of assaulting emergency service workers.


The police said that a female officer suffered from a broken nose, and other officers required hospitalisation.


BBC News quoted Assistant Chief Constable Wasim Chaudhry as saying: “We know that a film of an incident at Manchester Airport that is circulating widely shows an event that is truly shocking, and that people are rightly extremely concerned about. The use of such force in an arrest is an unusual occurrence and one that we understand creates alarm.”


The IOPC said it would assess GMP’s referral “and decide what further action is required”.


A protest was held following the footage release where one of the protesters had told the crowd they were “no longer going to settle” for “police brutality”, the Manchester Evening News reported.


People from the British-Pakistani community expressed their disappointment at the police for mistreating the boys. A criminal lawyer in UK, Attik Malik posted a video of him expressing the disgust he felt after the videos and pronounced, “enough is enough.”


Another user pointed out that, “this cannot be challenged. This is absolutely brutal and disgusting.”

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