Hong Kong police have been using knee hold for months prior to killing of George Floyd

Hong Kong police have been using knee hold for months prior to killing of George Floyd

Looped, slow motion footage shows a Hong Kong policeman placing his knee on the back of the neck of a pro-democracy protester - the same arrest technique which has been implicated in the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The clip was filmed on May 24th - the day before Floyd died while being arrested by police in Minneapolis.

Officer Derek Chauvin, who kneeled on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes as Floyd begged him to stop, is facing a charge of second-degree murder.

According to the filmer of this clip, Hong Kong officers have been using the same technique for months in their crackdown on pro-democracy protests but have also tried to distance themselves from scenes of police brutality in the USA.

On Friday (June 12th), a video went viral in Hong Kong of a policeman chanting "Black Lives Matter" and "I can't breathe." Last month a man died in Hong Kong after police used what they described as "appropriate force" to arrest him for criminal damage, drugs possession and assaulting officers.