TEHRAN - As people mark the brutal public execution of George Floyd, the question of human rights for African Americans remains an issue.

A makeshift memorial has been held in the U.S. city of Minneapolis to commemorate the third anniversary of the police murder of African American national.

People hugged each other, shed tears, laid flowers and placed a sign that read “SAY THEIR NAMES”, an increasingly popular slogan used by activists for the black victims of police brutality.

Derek Chauvin, a white officer forced his knee on (a handcuffed) Floyd's neck for nearly ten minutes while two other officers restrained his knees for the same duration of time, as Floyd pleaded for his life until his life ended in the racist arrest.

Police say he was arrested for an apparent counterfeit $20 bill, something that was never proven but more importantly something that should have never ended in a daylight public execution.

The deadly incident was captured on cellphone video by a passerby and as the footage went viral it sparked months of protests across the United States and around the Western world against police discrimination.

Floyd was murdered by U.S. police on May 25, 2020 because of the color of his skin.

The mass nationwide protests in the U.S. triggered promises by lawmakers of changes to institutionalized racism against African Americans by the police and other sectors.

In Washington, a police reform bill named after Floyd and proposed by the Biden administration in the face of rising pressure is all but dead. It failed to pass the previous Congress, before the November 2022 midterm elections when Biden's Democrats had a majority in Congress, and has yet to be reintroduced in the new Congress. Among the other changes in the bill, it would have taken away the legal immunity police officers enjoy, something that has safeguarding them from civil lawsuits.

Three years later, Black Americans are still waiting for changes.

Just earlier this month another African American man, Jordan Neely, was killed in similar circumstances to that of Floyd’s murder. Neely was travelling on a New York City subway when, this time, a white former U.S. Marine put him in a chokehold that eventually led to his death. As with Floyd, the deadly incident was captured on mobile phone video and caused an instant uproar.

The perpetrator, Daniel Penny, is enjoying the support of the Republican party who have introduced a bill to "recognize" and "honor" him, despite his murder of Neely.

Would the Republican party have introduced such a bill if the victim was white?

Black rights activists have branded Penny as a dangerous vigilante in a city where poor black men can be killed with impunity, and demanded justice. But those demands have fallen on deaf ears again.

Many have argued that only a fraction of the fatal racist incidents against black Americans cause an uproar because very little videos of the brutal killings are captured on cell phones. Many other black Americans are dying in similar circumstances but no footage is available for the world to see the nature of their deaths.

While Floyd’s death, three years ago, horrified a world confronted by the stark fact of U.S. police brutality against black Americans, it also saw the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement into the mainstream while galvanizing calls for police reform, which now looks like a pipe dream.

And three years later more black Americans have been murdered by the police, some at traffic stops, others on the streets and some in their own homes solely because of the color of their skin.

Last week, another extraordinary case saw police raid the home of a black family in Mississippi after an 11-year-old child called the police himself for help as his mother was confronting a man who showed up at their home and threatened her.

Instead of protecting the child and his mother, police told them to exit their house with their hands raised in the air. One officer then shot the unarmed 11-year-old boy Aderrien Murry in the chest. Reports say Murry was taken to the University of Mississippi Medical Center for treatment and released on Wednesday (May 24).

On Thursday, family and supporters of the child gathered at the family home chanting “No Justice, No Peace”, before a protest at the city hall after news emerged that the officer who fired the bullet was placed on paid leave. The family is demanding that he be dismissed, arrested and charged with aggravated assault.

The mother of the 11-year-old victim, Nakala Murry, says, "He (the police officer) was like, 'come out with your hands up'. At that moment is when my son came out. To come out with their hands up but you're shooting? I don't understand… I don't want to die. This is what he (her son) was saying while he was on the ground. I said, 'you're not going to die, baby. You're not going to die. Just keep talking'."

An unidentified supporter of the family told Reuters "this baby is clearly an 11-year-old child. And my question is, what possible threat could he have posed. He is clearly a baby and you are a trained veteran officer. So what in your training makes you think that this baby posed a threat to you."

"We are demanding justice. An 11-year-old black boy in the city of Indianola came within an inch of losing his life," the family’s attorney said. "He had done nothing wrong and everything right."

The incident is just the latest in a string of police shootings of unarmed African Americans. In April, officers responded to a domestic violence call at the wrong house and killed a 52-year-old man in New Mexico. In 2020, Breonna Taylor was killed during a botched police raid in Louisville, Kentucky.

Many other African Americans across the United States have been killed by the police for running away from the police out of fear of being shot dead simply at a routine traffic stop.

Three years after the murder of Floyd, critics are asking if any progress has actually been made.

Alex Steinman, a Black business owner, says “black and brown people have always done for themselves what systems won’t. We consistently rely on ourselves and our communities to launch and sustain our businesses, our dreams, and our careers.”

According to Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit research group that tracks killings by officers, the crisis is getting worse. “Killings by police have not only continued, but they’ve also increased. Police killed 1,176 people in 2022 – the highest number recorded since the organization began a decade ago. Yet leaders at every level of government are failing to rein in the absolute worst abuses by police despite clear evidence that they must do so.”

Nekima Armstrong, a civil rights lawyer and activist, told Yahoo news “I think there was a lot of smoke and mirrors in the aftermath of George Floyd being murdered. A lot of companies have not followed through on their commitment, while others have come through, but low-income Black folks continue to get the low end of the stick. We didn’t see the resources trickle into communities.”

Tens of millions of people, white and black, across the U.S. took part in racial justice protests following Floyd’s murder. Three years later activists say nothing has changed and African Americans, who were brought to the U.S. as slaves to build the country, are still facing grave human rights abuses.

Activists say they will not rest until there is justice for Floyd and all the victims of the deadly police brutality against the African American community.