2007-05-28
Monday 28 May 2007 17:56
Thousands of protesters marched through the German port city of Hamburg Monday in a dry run for demonstrations against next month's G8 summit on the Baltic coast, with some of the crowd clashing with riot police afterwards.
The protest groups, ranging from leftists to church activists, complained at the huge force of riot police flanking the march on both sides. Organizers had called off the protest halfway through, saying the police had obstructed them.
"This mobile cordon is a disgrace," said an organizer, Andreas Blechschmidt. "It's certainly not reducing tension. "
Police had blocked streets near Hamburg's ornate town hall, and told the crowd of 4,000 to turn back.
A court had earlier confirmed a ban on the marchers coming within 500 metres of a city hotel, the venue for the two-day Asia-Europe meeting (ASEM) of foreign ministers beginning Monday evening.
Most protesters left, but radicals fought with riot police, who used jets of water fired from riot-control trucks to disperse them. Police said they made several arrests.
About 1,000 in the crowd were black-clad leftist radicals from several European nations, police said. The radicals wore balaclavas and protective clothing to keep themselves anonymous in clashes.
The radicals had said on a website that they aimed to "disrupt" the meeting organized by the "totalitarian, capitalist" European Union, which they charged was aiming to "exploit" Asian nations.
Ralf Meyer, a police spokesman, denied the police were too restrictive. He said police had to respond to the threat to disrupt the meeting, and the police presence was not directed against the peaceful demonstrators.
The protest movement, which also included labour groups critical of globalization, said earlier the Hamburg demonstration would be a curtain-raiser to protests at the June 6-8 summit of the Group of Eight in the German resort of Heiligendamm.
Many in the crowd wore colourful, carnival-like costumes and were protesting at a German police investigation of petrol-bombings in Hamburg and Berlin in recent months. They said the inquiry had treated the whole protest movement as if they were terrorists.
On Sunday evening, police had broken up an unregistered demonstration by 100 radicals in the city and briefly detained 53 after they tried to erect a barricade across a street.
Germany currently holds the presidency of both the European Union and the G8. The ASEM meeting is the biggest gathering in Germany linked to Berlin's EU presidency. dpa jbp sc ch
