UK Black Lives Matter protesters block Heathrow airport road

People claim the photo is insensitive to supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, who feel like the black community is disproportionately profiled and killed by police.

Drivers headed to London’s Heathrow airport ran into an unexpected obstacle on Friday as Black Lives Matter-affiliated demonstrators halted traffic when they blocked a main motorway in the area.

Meanwhile, in the central English city of Nottingham, activists blocked streetcars by lying down on the tracks while other protests took place in the cities of Birmingham and Manchester, the group said.

Ten protesters were arrested at Heathrow, police told CNN.

The Black Lives Matter movement arose in 2012 after George Zimmerman, US neighborhood watch volunteer, fatally shot an unarmed black 17-years-old Trayvon Martin n Sanford, Florida, and was not declared guilty of murder.

The United States’ Black Lives Matter movement has been making headlines for its protests in response to recent killings by police, but many Americans don’t realize that the United Kingdom has its own growing Black Lives Matter movement.

The group called for “nationwide #shutdown” in a post on social media, and their Friday morning protests resulted in more than a dozen arrests.

The activists unfurled a banner with the words “this is a crisis” and laid down on a turnoff from the M4 freeway heading to the airport, one of the world’s busiest. Four had been taken into custody but by midday, officers were still trying to release another six who had “locked” on to each other, it said in a statement.

“There are everyday forms of racism you face in terms of stop and search, increased levels of unemployment, over-representation within mental health custody, the prison system – this is an ongoing disruption to black people’s lives which they constantly face”, an activist said.

West Midlands Police said four women and one man were arrested. Placard-waving activists in Manchester also brought trams and traffic to a halt outside Piccadilly bus station.

The protests came the day after the fifth anniversary of Mark Duggan’s death.

An inquest into his death in 2014 found Duggan was lawfully killed, even though he did not have a gun in his hand at the moment he was shot.

A video on the BLMUK Facebook page features a man saying there have been “1,562 deaths in police custody in my lifetime”, adding that there have been no convictions.

Police said they were on the scene “negotiating with a small number of protesters”. His death touched off riots in poorer sections of the capital, as well as cities including Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool.