Nearly 200 arrested in operation to disperse anti-vaccine protest in Ottawa

Ottawa police confirm they arrested 191 people and charge 103 during their operation to disperse the anti-vaccine protest

The Ottawa Police confirmed this Sunday that they arrested 191 people and filed charges against 103 of them during their operation to disperse the anti-vaccine protest in the center of the Canadian capital.

For the first time in three weeks, the surroundings of the Parliament of Canada woke up this Sunday without trucks or protesters, after the local police expelled them on Saturday in an operation that generated controversy due to the use of pepper spray and other tactics against the crowd.

A dozen protesters were still gathered less than a kilometer from Parliament, according to The Toronto Star newspaper, but the scene was very different from the one that paralyzed downtown Ottawa and several border crossings with the US for weeks.

The Ottawa Police stressed that their operation was not over, despite having regained control of a wide perimeter of the center, including Wellington Street, where Parliament is located and which has been the core of the protests since January 29.

“We are using fences to make sure we don’t lose the ground we have gained,” police said on their official Twitter account.

Since the operation began on Friday, the Police have arrested 191 people, of whom 103 have been accused of different charges, the majority of which consist of “revolt and obstruction,” the authorities said on the same channel.

In total, 89 of those detainees “have been released under conditions” that include the prohibition to approach certain areas, while the rest are already unconditionally released, they added.

In addition, the tow trucks towed away 57 vehicles, mostly trucks, associated with the protesters, many of which were left parked in the area when police cleared out the crowd.

The Special Investigations Unit of the province of Ontario announced this Sunday that it is investigating the actions of the Police in two incidents on Friday and Saturday, the CBC network reported.

In one of them, a 49-year-old woman claimed to have been seriously injured after an interaction with a Toronto Police officer who was on horseback; and the other has to do with the use of riot control weapons against a crowd.

Ottawa police forces confirmed this Saturday that they had used “medium-range impact weapons”, known in English by its acronym Arwen, to “stop the violent actions” of protesters who were “assaulting officers with weapons”.


Police also acknowledged that they had used pepper spray in a confrontation with some protesters, after television showed images of people rubbing their eyes with the snow that covered the street.

The agents acted under the Emergencies Law, activated on Monday by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and that grants the Government extraordinary powers to end the protests, which came to affect trade with the United States by blocking border crossings.