“Significant progress” was made on Saturday February 19 in the evacuation of central Ottawa, paralyzed for weeks by anti-sanitary measures truckers, announced the police who were still working to dislodge a hard core of demonstrators from the Canadian capital.

Spraying the protesters with pepper spray, destroying the windows of the vehicles in which some had taken refuge, the authorities had resumed in the afternoon the major axis in front of the Canadian Parliament, where hundreds of trucks had been parked for 23 days.

At least 170 people were arrested on Friday and Saturday, around 50 vehicles towed away and weapons seized, police said, who also destroyed tents, shacks, food stalls and other structures erected by protesters.

"This operation is still in progress, it is not finished and it will still take time to achieve our objectives", however underlined Steve Bell, chief of police of the Canadian capital, without advancing on a more precise timetable. .

The tension was particularly palpable on Saturday morning in this usually very calm city, the demonstrators throwing smoke bombs towards the police supported by armored vehicles and snipers.

Avoid "more violence"  

"I'm not leaving," Johnny Rowe told AFP, brushing aside the risk of arrest.

“There is no turning back,” he says.

"Everyone here, myself included, has had their lives destroyed by what has happened over the past two years."

"I'm freezing my ass, but I'm staying," echoed another protester calling himself Brian.

Some of them formed a human chain on Saturday under the cries and slogans "Freedom".

“Anyone found in the area” of the center of the Canadian capital “will be arrested”, tweeted the police, accusing the truckers, many of whom came with children, of endangering them.

Leaders of the movement who accuse the police of abuse have also called on truck drivers to leave the outskirts of Parliament to avoid "more violence".

Many truckers have chosen to leave on their own and take their truck off the streets.

An AFP reporter observed a steady stream of departures.

"We're taking this somewhere else," says musician Nicole Craig, her husband Alex adding "even though the truckers have left town, the protest will continue. The fight continues."

A few hundred people ignored the order, braving the freezing cold of the night, waving Canadian flags and lighting fireworks over a barricade, and singing the 1980s American protest anthem, "We're Not Gonna Take It".

Emergency measures

Minimized at the start by the authorities, this movement called "Convoy of freedom", initiated at the end of January, started from truckers protesting against the obligation to be vaccinated to cross the border between Canada and the United States.

But the demands have extended to a refusal of all health measures and, for many demonstrators, to a rejection of the government of Justin Trudeau.

After an exceptional day of closure due to the security context, Parliament resumed its work on Saturday around the use of the law on emergency measures decreed by the Canadian Prime Minister, who also called a crisis meeting on Saturday.

The chamber has been examining since Thursday the implementation of this law invoked on Monday by Justin Trudeau to put an end to the "illegal" blockages in progress in the country.

This is only the second time this provision has been used in peacetime, and it is highly contested by the Conservative opposition.

With AFP

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