You're reading: Ukraine police break up tax protesters’ tent city

Ukrainian police early on Friday broke up an encampment of small business owners who had been protesting in Kiev's city centre against tax reform, Ukrainian media said.

Civilian social workers, backed up by a force of about 250 police including riot police, moved into the "tent city" on Kiev’s Independence Square at around 5 a.m.

They dismantled tents and took down placards denouncing the new tax plans, the Ukrainska Pravda online newspaper said.

A police spokesman, Volodymyr Polishchuk, confirmed the operation. "There was a decision of the district court and this was carried out," he said.

The Ukrainian leadership on Thursday backed down in the face of big street protests by thousands of small business entrepreneurs and softened a new tax code that would have made them pay higher taxes.

But a few hundred people had continued to stay overnight in the ‘tent city’ protesting against other parts of the new tax code. Three people were briefly detained but then released, the police spokesman said.