Even as Houston, US, said farewell to George Floyd in a rousing hometown funeral, with calls for justice for the 46-year-old Black man whose death ignited global protests against police brutality and racism, heeding to a call by senior Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan, India’s human rights activists, too, lit candles and lamps in his honour to pay tribute to him.
Macwan, who is recipient of the prestigious Robert F Kennedy Human Rights Award in 2000, with the Human Rights Watch naming him one of the year's five "outstanding human rights defenders", lit candles and lamps with his colleagues at the Dalit Shakti Kendra (DSK), which he founded in 1989 to impart employable skills and human rights awareness among underprivileged teenagers.
Earlier, in an open letter published in Counterview, Macwan said, “As Martin Luther King had said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’, we want to say that, Dalits, we can feel suffocation in India that the Blacks and the Coloured people do in US, as expressed in the final words of George Floyd, ‘We can’t breathe’.”
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