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ROUNDUP: Drop protest ban, anti-G8 groups demand
Berlin (dpa) – Major critics of globalization demanded Thursday that Chancellor Angela Merkel overrule a state ban on protests close to Western leaders during next month’s Group of Eight (G8) summit in Germany.
A buffer zone around the June 6-8 gathering of the leaders of seven rich western countries and Russia was a restriction on the freedom of protest, said organizers of an “alternative summit” to be held nearby June 5-7.
Tension has been growing in Germany in recent weeks over a ban on unlicensed demonstrating within 5 kilometres of a welded-mesh fence around the G8 venue at Heiligendamm on the Baltic coast.
“We utterly condemn this,” said Gerhard Timm, chief executive of the BUND environmentalist group in Berlin, adding that
“We’re not building any fence round our summit,” he said, referring to discussions by 1,000 activists in the nearby city of Rostock of issues on the G8 agenda including global warming, energy, labour codes and aid.
“We have to watch carefully to see that the industrialized nations’ promises of more aid to Africa are not just tricks or not even kept at all,” said Joern Kalinski of aid group Oxfam.
In a speech to the German parliament, Merkel defended the restrictions and appealed to the demonstrators to stay peaceful.
“Those who are shouting the loudest against the restrictions would be the first to complain if violence broke out,” she said. “Those who demonstrate peacefully are more likely to be heard.”
She said the summit was the opportunity to discuss the world’s problems. The objective was worldwide economic growth while limiting the related risks. These included climate change. Answers could only be found jointly.
While the main protest rally against the G8 will be held four days before the summit in the nearby city of Rostock, some radicals hope to invade the event itself.
A protest rock concert, dubbed the P8, will take place in Rostock June 7 with Irish singer Bono performing.
In a parliamentary debate after Merkel spoke, Greens co-leader Claudia Roth said police raids two weeks ago to discover the authors of a series of petrol-bomb attacks in Germany were “arbitrary” and intended to intimidate the whole protest movement.
She said Germany should not be acting like a “punch-up state in the style of Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
Senior German officials have defended police who took samples of the body odour of five leftists as part of the inquiry. Berlin has denied claims that police dogs might be trained to bite the five leftists.
Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said Thursday in Munich the samples were for a crime inquiry and would be destroyed after use.