US city declares emergency as violence breaks out during white nationalist protest rally
CHARLOTTESVILLE: Hundreds of people chanted, threw punches, hurled water bottles and unleashed chemical sprays on each other on Saturday at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in the state of Virginia, the US.
Governor Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency and police dressed in riot gear ordered people to disperse after chaotic violent clashes between white nationalists and counter protestors.
Right-wing blogger Jason Kessler had called for what he termed a “pro-white” rally to protest Charlottesville’s decision to remove a statue of Confederate Gen Robert E Lee from a downtown park.
It’s the latest confrontation in Charlottesville since the city about 100 miles outside of Washington voted earlier this year to remove a statue of Lee.
In May, a torch-wielding group that included prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer gathered around the statue for a nighttime protest, and in July, about 50 members of a North Carolina-based Ku Klux Klan group travelled there for a rally, where they were met by hundreds of counter-protesters.
Kessler said this week that the rally is partly about the removal of Confederate symbols but also about free speech and “advocating for white people.”
“This is about an anti-white climate within the Western world and the need for white people to have advocacy like other groups do,” he said.
Between rally attendees and counter-protesters, authorities were expecting as many as 6,000 people, Charlottesville police said this week.
Among those expected to attend are Confederate heritage groups, KKK members, militia groups and “alt-right” activists, who generally espouse a mix of racism, white nationalism and populism.
Both the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which track extremist groups, said the event has the potential to be the largest of its kind in at least a decade.
Officials have been preparing for the rally for months. Virginia State Police will be assisting local authorities, and a spokesman said the Virginia National Guard “will closely monitor the situation and will be able to rapidly respond and provide additional assistance if needed.”