Black Lives Matter block Heathrow Airport

A group of activists brought holiday traffic to a standstill early Friday when they locked themselves together and lay down on a multilane slip road leading to Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport.

Demonstrators staged a “shutdown” and blocked traffic by lying in the road close to a roundabout on the M4 near London’s Heathrow airport holding a banner bearing the words “This Is a Crisis”.

Black Lives Matter organiser Joshua Virasami told the BBC: “We need black people all over the world to come together, groups and individuals, to build this movement to achieve justice and equality in Britain and all over the world”.

A number of people have been arrested, said London’s Metropolitan Police.

Police are reportedly still clearing out some remaining protesters, but most of the highway lanes leading to the airport are open.

The campaign group called for “nationwide #shutdown” in a Facebook post, with protests also taking place in Nottingham and Birmingham, and later on in Manchester.

The activists could be heard chanting “black lives matter” as traffic began to block up behind them.

Last month hundreds of people marched through central London to the Houses of Parliament in protest at the shooting of two black men by police in the US.

In a statement, the national organisation, which describes itself as a network of anti-racists, said the United Kingdom needs a movement similar to the campaign in the US.

Another man says black people are “up to 37 times more likely” to be stopped and searched, while another says black people face “far more severe” sentencing than white people for the same offence. Activists cite the 1,563 deaths in England and Wales since 1990 that have happened either in police custody or related to police contact.

Activists are calling for a day of rebellion across Britain with more demonstrations planned across the country. A spokesperson for Nottinghamshire police said: “Officers are now on scene and are negotiating with a small number of protesters”, The Guardian reported.

Black Lives Matter organizers are attempting to downplay the claims of the parents, but are running into to indisputable fact that their rallies and protests have a long history of pronounced and heavily documented animosity towards law enforcement.

Prosecutors in Virginia won a rare conviction of a white former police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teen suspected of shoplifting. An inquest jury ruled in January 2014 that Duggan was killed lawfully but his family previous year won the right to appeal.