The Congress spotlighted the video of a Kerala Students Union (KSU) black flag protester Joel in a seemingly police stranglehold in Kozhikode on Monday as stark evidence of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s “obsessive throttling of dissent” to insulate the Cabinet’s “elitist and extravagant public outreach sham”, Navakerala Sadas, from democratic protests and civic criticism.
Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan termed the incident a “George Floyd moment” that worryingly harked back to the gruesome episode of police “highhandedness” that resulted in the death of Floyd, a black person, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis in the U.S. in 2022.
(The incident ignited widespread public outrage in the U.S., triggered nationwide protests and forced a global reckoning on human rights.)
