Hundreds of people protested outside Ireland’s parliament on Thursday to express outrage at the death of a Congolese-born man after he was restrained outside a Dublin department store last week. Yves Sakila was detained by security guards on one of the capital’s busiest shopping streets on 15 May in connection with an alleged shoplifting incident, police said. He became unresponsive at the scene and was later pronounced dead.
A video of the incident widely shared days later on social media showed Sakila being pinned to the ground by five men for almost five minutes as bystanders watched. Two of the men held his face to the ground and at one point one of them appeared to kneel on his head or neck.
The incident has revived memories of George Floyd, a Black Minneapolis man killed by a police officer who kneeled on his neck for several minutes during an arrest in May 2020. Floyd’s death triggered the Black Lives Matter movement in the US and sparked protests around the world against police brutality and racism