Obama condemns US govt's response to peaceful demonstrations

Former US President Barack Obama on Thursday (local time) took aim at the Trump administration for sending federal agents to use "tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators."

He further said, "those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws and attacking our voting rights".

"Today we witness with our own eyes, police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans. George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators," Obama was quoted as saying by CNN.

In a eulogy, Obama praised Lewis as an "American whose faith was tested again and again to produce a man of pure joy and unbreakable perseverance."

John Lewis, the civil rights warrior who marched with Martin Luther King Jr and was nearly killed in police beatings before serving for decades as a US Congressman, died earlier this month, aged 80.

In late 2019 Lewis was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Obama said he owes "a great debt" to Lewis and his "forceful vision of freedom."

Former US President stated that this country is a constant work in progress. According to CNN, he said: "Even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision, even undermining the postal service in the run-up to an election. It's going to be dependent on mail-in ballots so people don't get sick," Obama said to a standing ovation."

( With inputs from ANI )