CANBERRA, June 14 (Xinhua) -- The protests in the United States showed a feeling among Americans that the situation is becoming hopeless unless they stand up and demonstrate, an Australian scholar has said.

The death of George Floyd, which triggered protests spreading to many countries, was "just another one of the examples in the recent American history where the police have treated black people with no respect for their civil or human rights," John Hart, former head of the Department of Political Science at the Australian National University, told Xinhua in an interview.

Floyd, the 46-year-old African American, died on May 25 after being pinned by the neck for nine minutes by a white officer's knee while pleading "I can't breathe."

Floyd's death revealed the "racist and violent" nature of some police officers, and "triggered a demonstration," said Hart.

"There is a sensitivity in the United States amongst a lot of people and now seems to be a majority judging from the opinion polls about racism in the United States and discrimination against black people, and violence against black people, taking their lives away for no reason, which is something that the Americans have got to stand up and oppose," he added.

In the interview, Hart questioned the tactics used by the police against protesters, giving an example of a 75-year-old protester in Baffalo, who was knocked over by the police. The protester was reported by local media as suffering from a brain injury.

"It's just appalling," said Hart. "There's no justification for it."

Noting that the protests were not handled well by the U.S. leadership, the scholar said President Donald Trump "has inflamed the situation and that may have been the cause of some of the violence by the protesters."

Hart believed that the protests are a sign of how bad the situation is in the United States, "if you add into Trump's handling of the coronavirus issue."

"Everything he's done there was being wrong," said the scholar, adding that "It started off in late January, and in February he made a public statement that the epidemic would disappear by the beginning of April."

"There was no attempt to prepare America for the consequences of it," he said.

The chaos in the United States surprised the world, said Hart.

"The whole world deplores what's going on in the United States," said Hart. "World leaders are less inclined to ... regard the United States as the defender of the free world." Enditem