TULSA, June 19 — Tulsa, Oklahoma has imposed a curfew ahead of a campaign rally by US President Donald Trump tomorrow, amid tensions in a city that was the site of one of the worst racial massacres in US history.
In an executive order yesterday, Mayor G.T. Bynum cited fears of violent protests surrounding Monday’s rally in proclaiming a “civil emergency.”
The curfew, which went into effect at 10pm Thursday until 6am Saturday and resumes after the rally until 6am Sunday, covers an area in downtown Tulsa around the arena where Trump is to speak.
More than 100,000 people were expected to attend the rally, which has been sharply criticised as both a potential Covid-19 super-spreader event and insensitive to Tulsa’s painful racial history.
In May and June of 1921, a white mob burned down a black Tulsa neighbourhood, Greenwood, killing as many as 300 people and destroying some 1,200 buildings.
The Trump rally has drawn calls for protests and civil rights leader Al Sharpton was expected to speak at a rally today commemorating Juneteenth, an unofficial holiday marking the end of slavery in the United States.
Bynum’s executive order cited “civil unrest” in Tulsa and the United States since the May 25 killing of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer who knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, suffocating him.
It also noted that a federal exclusion zone was being established around the Trump rally site “in the interests of national security.”
“As mayor, I have received information from the Tulsa Police Department and other law enforcement agencies that shows that individuals from organised groups who have been involved in destructive and violent behaviour in other states are planning to travel to the city of Tulsa for purposes of causing unrest in and around the rally,” the executive order said.
The curfew bans all pedestrian and vehicular traffic in a designated area in the vicinity of the Trump rally. — AFP
