The protesters in Australia’s largest city chanted, “I can’t breathe” — some of the final words of both Floyd and David Dungay, a 26-year-old Aboriginal man who died in a Sydney prison in 2015 while being restrained by five guards.

The demonstrators carried placards reading, “Black Lives Matter,” “Aboriginal Lives Matter,” “White Silence is Violence” and, referring to those protesting in cities across the US, “We See You, We Hear You, We Stand With You.” Other placards read, “We’re here because they aren’t,” with depictions of Floyd and Dungay.

The protesters, who appeared to number around 3,000, marched from Hyde Park to the New South Wales state Parliament, with plans to continue to the US Consulate.

“It’s just gut-wrenching the climate of what’s happening in America, and it’s also happening here in Australia, though it’s subtle. Racism is real for me,” said one of the protesters, Aoatua Lee, AP reported.

Around 2,000 demonstrators had gathered in Australia’s west coast city of Perth on Monday night to peacefully protest Floyd’s death, and rallies are planned for other Australian cities this week.

Floyd died last week after he was pinned to the pavement by a white police officer who put his knee on the handcuffed black man’s neck until he stopped breathing. His death in Minneapolis set off protests that spread across America.

An indigenous Australian lawmaker called on governments to use Floyd’s death as an opportunity to reduce the deaths of indigenous people in custody.

Linda Burney, the opposition spokeswoman on indigenous Australians, said Tuesday that more than 430 indigenous people had died in Australian police custody since 1991.

“I think we should be using it as an opportunity,” Burney told Australian Broadcasting Corp., Referring to Floyd’s death. “Whether we like it or not, it doesn’t take much for racism to come out of the underbelly of this country.”

“It seems to me that there are lots of things that state and territory governments could do, and the federal government could do to lower the number of Aboriginal people in custody,” she added.

While indigenous adults make up only 2% of the Australian population, they account for 27% of the prison population.

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese backed Burney’s call. “There are far too many indigenous Australians who are incarcerated today. As a percentage of the population, this is a tragedy and it’s one that must be addressed as an absolute national priority,” Albanese told reporters.

Meanwhile, more African leaders are speaking up over the killing of Floyd.

“It cannot be right that, in the 21st century, the United States, this great bastion of democracy, continues to grapple with the problem of systemic racism,” Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo, said in a statement, adding that black people the world over are shocked and distraught.

Kenyan opposition leader and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga offered a prayer for the US, “that there be justice and freedom for all human beings who call America their country.”

Like some in Africa who have spoken out, Odinga also noted troubles at home, saying the judging of people by character instead of skin color “is a dream we in Africa, too, owe our citizens.

And South Africa’s finance minister, Tito Mboweni, recalled leading a small protest outside the US Embassy several years ago over the apparent systemic killings of blacks. Mboweni said the US ambassador at the time, Patrick Gaspard, “invited me to his office and said: ‘what you see is nothing, it is much worse.’”

In Europe on Monday, thousands spilled across streets in Amsterdam to denounce police brutality, and those demonstrating in Paris urged the French government to take police violence more seriously and held up signs like “Racism is suffocating us.”

Some government leaders have seen the US unrest as a chance to highlight what they see as American hypocrisy on protest movements at home versus abroad.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam questioned the foreign criticism over an imminent national security law being imposed in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.

“They take their own country’s national security very seriously, but for the security of our country, especially the situation in Hong Kong, they are looking at it through tinted glasses,” Lam said Tuesday.

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The films are “Dressage” by Puya Badkubeh, “Pig” by Mani Haqiqi, “No Date, No Signature” by Vahid Jalilvand, “24 Frames” by Abbas Kiarostami and “3 Faces” by Jafar Panahi.

“The Breaker Upperers”, a comedy by Jackie van Beek from New Zealand will be opening the festival.

Australian filmmaker Lynette Wallworth will preside over the jury of the official competition.

Filipino producer and writer Bianca Balbuena, South African composer Chris Letcher, Australian actor Ewen Leslie and Japanese programming director Yoshi Yatabe are the members of the jury.

Photo: Hedyeh Tehrani acts in a scene from “No Date, No Signature” by Vahid Jalilvand.

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The film is about teenage lovers Nabi and Fereshteh who are separated by her family’s flight from Afghanistan. After years apart, Nabi decides to find Fereshteh and risk the hardship of flight and resettlement in Europe with a hope of a better life.

“Breath” by Narges Abyar received an honorable mention from a jury of the Australian cineastes Rebecca Barry, Ben Ferris, Jennifer Peedom and Rosemary Blight, and the Australia-based Iraqi actor and writer Osamah Sami.

“Save Me” by Mohsen Nabavi was named best short film, while “Not Yet” by Arian Vazirdaftari received an honorable mention.

The four-day festival reviewed New York-based Iranian filmmaker Amir Naderi’s movies “The Runner” and “Monte” in a special program.

In addition, a seminar was organized on the renowned Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami on the sidelines of the event.

The Persian International Film Festival was established in 2011 to promote films from Iranian cinema and the Persian-speaking world.

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