A rchive Date
[ 15-02-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Mass Media ]
|
[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/02/15/26814-cp.html
Millions join global anti-war protests
Sat, February 15, 2003
LONDON (CP) - Millions of protesters - many of them marching in the capitals of traditional allies of the United States - demonstrated Saturday against U.S. plans to attack Iraq.
In a global outpouring of anti-war sentiment, Rome claimed the biggest turnout - one million police estimated, while organizers claimed three times that figure. In London, at least 750,000 people demonstrated in what police called the city's largest demonstration ever.
In Spain, several million people turned out at anti-war rallies in about 55 cities and towns across the country, with more than 500,000 each attending rallies in Madrid and Barcelona.
Spanish police gauged the Madrid turnout at 660,000. Organizers claimed nearly two million people gathered across the country in one of the biggest demonstrations since the 1975 death of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco.
More than 70,000 people marched in Amsterdam in the largest Netherlands demonstration since anti-nuclear rallies of the 1980s.
Berlin had up to a half-million people on the streets and Paris was estimated to have had about 100,000.
In New York City, rally organizers estimated the crowd at up to 500,000 people. City police provided no estimate of the crowd, which stretched 20 blocks deep and two blocks wide.
"Peace! Peace! Peace!" Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said while leading an ecumenical service near UN headquarters.
"Let America listen to the rest of the world - and the rest of the world is saying: 'Give the inspectors time."'
Bitter temperatures didn't cool the tempers of more than 100,000 peace activists in Montreal, who flocked to the city's core to get their message across.
The huge march wound from Dorchester Square to Complexe Guy Favreau, the city's main federal building.
In Vancouver, organizers estimated as many as 20,000 marched through the downtown core, at one point packing both lanes of Robson Street for about 10 blocks.
The cheering crowd made its way to the lawn of the Vancouver Art Gallery, where young people and longtime activists stood shoulder-to-shoulder, jamming the grassy area and surrounding streets.
In Toronto, about 10,000 people hit the pavement in a peaceful march that snarled Saturday afternoon traffic.
The call for peace was echoed in about 70 other Canadian cities and hundreds of others around the world on Saturday, called an international day of action by peace organizers.
In Ottawa, some demonstrators wore costumes and carried signs ranging from the curious to the comical. They started in Gatineau, marching across the Ottawa River to the capital.
A march in Quebec City attracted approximately 3,000 people, police said.
In Edmonton, as many as 12,000 protesters of all ages marched through downtown in a procession that stretched for five blocks. They chanted, stamped their feet in the -10C cold and carried signs with messages such as Let Exxon Send Their Own Troops, World Peace is Suffering from Colin Cancer and Smart Bombs are Stupid.
In Halifax, where temperatures dipped to -30C with wind chill, between 1,000 to 1,500 people marched through the city's downtown, chanting: "This war is not for missiles, it's for oil" as they stamped their feet to anti-globalization rap songs sung by a man on a makeshift bike cart.
London's marchers hoped - in the words of keynote speaker Rev. Jesse Jackson - to "turn up the heat" on Prime Minister Tony Blair, President George W. Bush's staunchest European ally for his tough Iraq policy.
Rome protesters showed their disagreement with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's support for Bush, while demonstrators in Paris and Berlin backed the skeptical stances of their governments.
"What I would say to Mr. Blair is stop toadying up to the Americans and listen to your own people, us, for once," said Elsie Hinks, 77, who marched in London with her husband, Sidney, a retired Anglican priest.
Tommaso Palladini, 56, who travelled from Milan to Rome, said: "You don't fight terrorism with a preventive war. You fight terrorism by creating more justice in the world."
Several dozen marchers from Genoa held up pictures of Iraqi artists.
"We're carrying these photos to show the other face of the Iraqi people that the TV doesn't show," said Giovanna Marenzana, 38.
Some leaders in German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government participated in the Berlin protest, which turned the tree-lined boulevard between the Brandenburg Gate and the 19th-century Victory Column into a sea of banners, balloons emblazoned with "No war in Iraq" and demonstrators swaying to live music. Police estimated the crowd at between 300,000 and 500,000.
"We Germans, in particular, have a duty to do everything to ensure that war - above all a war of aggression - never again becomes a legitimate means of policy," shouted Friedrich Schorlemmer, a Lutheran pastor and former East German pro-democracy activist.
In the Paris crowd at the Place Denfert-Rochereau, a large U.S. flag bore the black inscription: "Leave us alone."
Gerald Lenoir, 41, of Berkeley, Calif., went to Paris to support demonstrators.
"I am here to protest my government's aggression against Iraq," he said.
"Iraq does not pose a security threat to the United States and there are no links with al-Qaida."
In southern France, about 10,000 people demonstrated in Toulouse against the United States, chanting: "They bomb, they exploit, they pollute, enough of this barbarity."
Police estimated that 60,000 turned out in Oslo, Norway; 50,000 in bitter cold in Brussels, Belgium and about 35,000 in frigid Stockholm, Sweden.
About 80,000 marched in Dublin, Irish police said. Crowds were estimated at 60,000 in Seville, Spain; 40,000 in Bern, Switzerland; 30,000 in Glasgow, Scotland; 25,000 in Copenhagen, Denmark; 15,000 in Vienna, Austria; 5,000 in Cape Town and 4,000 in Johannesburg in South Africa; 5,000 in Tokyo and 2,000 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
"War is not a solution, war is a problem," Czech philosopher Erazim Kohak told about 500 people in Prague, the Czech Republic.
In Mexico City, as many as 10,000 people - including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu - snarled traffic for blocks before rallying near the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy. Demonstrators beat drums, clutched white balloons and waved handmade signs saying: War No, Peace Yes.
In Baghdad, tens of thousands of Iraqis, many carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles, demonstrated to support President Saddam Hussein and denounce the United States.
"Our swords are out of their sheaths, ready for battle," read one of hundreds of banners carried by marchers along Palestine Street, a broad Baghdad avenue.
In Damascus, the capital of neighbouring Syria, an estimated 200,000 protesters chanted anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli slogans while marching to the People's Assembly.
Najjah Attar, a former Syrian cabinet minister, accused Washington of attempting to change the region's map.
"The U.S. wants to encroach upon our own norms, concepts and principles," she said in Damascus.
"They are reminding us of the Nazi and fascist times."
An estimated 2,000 Israelis and Palestinians marched together against war in Tel Aviv on Saturday night.
In Ukraine, some 2,000 people rallied in snowy Kyiv's central square. Anti-globalists led a peaceful Rock Against War protest joined by Communists, socialists, Kurds and pacifists.
"We want to say that war is evil and that we who survived one know that better than anyone," said Majda Hadzic, 54.
In divided Cyprus, about 500 Greeks and Turks braved heavy rain to briefly block a British air base runway.
Several thousand protesters in Athens, Greece, unfurled a giant banner across the wall of the Acropolis - NATO, U.S. and EU Equals War - before heading toward the U.S. Embassy.
U.S. Ambassador Thomas Miller said the Greek protesters' indignation was misplaced.
"They should be demonstrating outside the Iraqi Embassy," he said before the march.
About 900 Puerto Ricans chanted anti-war slogans against the possible invasion of Iraq. One man waved a U.S. flag on which the stars were replaced with skulls.
In Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva began efforts to unite South American countries against a possible U.S.-led attack on Iraq. Police estimated 1,500 marchers.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
Cross-Indexed:
|
|