Police on the Canadian side of a key US border crossing clear protesters after a week of disruption.
Police have moved in to clear the remaining protesters blocking a key bridge between Canada and the United States, after days of disruption.
Canada’s trucker protests against Covid vaccine certification to cross the border have paralysed trade across the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario.
A judge issued an order on Friday to break up the protest, but dozens of demonstrators remained in defiance.
After days of warnings, police are now making arrests and towing vehicles.
Moves had been made to clear the demonstration on Saturday morning, and many of the vehicles involved left peacefully on police orders.
But as news of the police action spread, more protesters turned up, swelling the crowd.
On Sunday morning, only a few dozen people remained, and police resumed their operation, this time arresting a few who refused to leave.
Speaking on Saturday after some of the vehicles had been towed away, Windsor Police’s deputy chief of operations, Jason Bellaire, told the BBC that people, not vehicles, were now the problem.
“We need to make it exceedingly clear they’re not welcome to stay here, they’re not welcome to disrupt our bridge traffic, they’re not welcome to disrupt our community,” he said.
The protest has inspired others around the world to stage similar action, in a bid to congest city roads and attract attention – such as in France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.
‘Beginning of the end’
By Robin Levinson-King, BBC News, Windsor
The police came to oust the remaining protesters in the early cold of Sunday morning, putting an end to the blockade that had ground traffic on one of Canada’s most important trade routes to a halt for nearly a week.
Their numbers had dwindled overnight from a couple hundred protesters on Saturday to just about 30 stalwarts willing to brave the -17C (1F) temperature over night.
Police had erected concrete barricades, effectively boxing their encampments – located south of the Ambassador Bridge – and surrounded them in tactical gear.
“Nobody is doing anything there. We’re all just standing there with our Canadian flags, we want freedom”, protester Tyler Kok told the BBC.
“I heard one of the cops say ‘we’re taking the trucks first’ so I mean that’s kind of the beginning of the end. I was hoping it wasn’t going to end like this, I was hoping the police would allow us to continue to peacefully protest,” he added.
That protest had already cost the country hundreds of millions of dollars in lost trade.
About a kilometre down the road, after breaking up Mr Kok and his friends, police moved in to end a second small encampment.
Horns honked loud in protest, but with police far outnumbering protesters, their noise was a swan song, not a rallying cry.
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