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Protests against globalization - when resistance escalates

2022-06-14T15:40:27.726Z


Protests against globalization - when resistance escalates Created: 06/14/2022, 17:29 By: Lukas Zigo Whether it's the G7 summit, IMF meetings or World Bank consultations - there have been demonstrations against international organizations and globalization since the turn of the millennium. Mostly peaceful, but sometimes the protest escalates. 1 / 14International summits have repeatedly trigger


Protests against globalization - when resistance escalates

Created: 06/14/2022, 17:29

By: Lukas Zigo

Whether it's the G7 summit, IMF meetings or World Bank consultations - there have been demonstrations against international organizations and globalization since the turn of the millennium.

Mostly peaceful, but sometimes the protest escalates.

1 / 14International summits have repeatedly triggered violent protests for decades.

Seattle was the first.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) met in the city in the north-west of the USA in 1999.

40,000 protesters gathered in the city and fought street battles with the police for days.

Even the National Guard was deployed briefly.

The disputes went down in history as the “Battle of Seattle” and occupied the courts in the USA for years to come.

© Imago

2 / 14Young people in particular came together in Seattle in 1999 to demonstrate against capital and world trade.

A group of youngsters even burned dollar bills to express their protest against the neoliberal world order backed by the US.

The incredibly large number of demonstrators at the said protests against the WTO in Seattle took the authorities by surprise and caught the police and the city government completely unprepared.

Numerous different groups from the left-wing spectrum had called for the rallies and protest actions in the run-up: anarchists, trade unions, environmental activists and many more.

System-critical and radical left-wing groups celebrated the protests in Seattle as a success - and as the birth of the concept of globalization opponents.

© Imago

3 / 14What started in Seattle in 1999 continued a year later in Prague.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank met there in 2000.

More than 12,000 demonstrators fought street battles with the police.

More than 900 demonstrators were arrested.

The demonstrators tried to block the road to the Prague Congress Center with street barricades and Molotov cocktails.

Autonomous groups from across Europe also attended the protests.

The anti-capitalism protesters also used the cobblestone streets to throw them at the deployed police forces.

© Tomas Zelezny/dpa

The situation escalated especially around the Congress Center in Prague, where the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund held their meetings.

During the downtown clashes, 65 police officers and 20 protesters were injured.

There were reports of attacks on journalists.

Several shop windows were destroyed in the center of Prague.

Police used tear gas and water cannons to prevent groups of activists from reaching the summit venue.

Despite the large police presence, the demonstrators managed to get the IMF and World Bank summits to be called off before the end.

Seen here are exhausted police officers resting outside Prague's Congress Center after clashes.

More dangerous clashes with the police broke out in Gothenburg the following year.

5 / 14The protests against the EU summit in Gothenburg in 2001 reached an even larger dimension than the demonstrations in Prague. The aim of the meeting was the reform and enlargement of the European Union and the development of a sustainability strategy.

For the period of the meeting on June 15th and 16th, 25,000 demonstrators were expected.

The Swedish police were no match for the riots of EU and US opponents, anti-capitalists and opponents of globalization.

They did not own water cannons and did not use tear gas or rubber bullets.

On the morning of June 14, when the police surrounded the Hvitfeldtska high school, where several hundred activists were quartered, the riots began.

© Anja Niedringhaus/dpa

6 / 14 During the protest march, there were clashes between the Swedish police and the demonstrators.

Chairs and tables from cafes were used as barricades and set on fire by protesters on Friday June 15, 2001.

More than 150 people were arrested and 36 injured in the clashes.

© Johan Framst/dpa

7 / 14In the Italian port city in 2001, both the presence and the violence of the anti-globalization protests reached a new dimension.

The 27th G8 summit in Genoa was overshadowed by violent riots.

An estimated 200,000 demonstrators came to Genoa.

After clashes with the police and night raids by security forces, those arrested complained of severe ill-treatment by the authorities.

The police were accused of being brutal, denying the right to non-violent protest and deliberately escalating the situation.

The Italian government even suspended the Schengen agreement for the duration of the summit to monitor the movements of protesters from across the EU.

However, this did not prevent riots.

On the contrary, the protests turned into brutal violence.

329 demonstrators were arrested.

In total, over 400 demonstrators and 100 security forces were injured in Genoa.

On July 20, 23-year-old Genoa activist Carlo Giuliani was shot dead during clashes with police.

He approached the vehicle of an Italian police officer with a fire extinguisher.

The policeman opened fire and hit Giuliani.

The activist was then run over twice more by a police vehicle.

A number of police, local and national officials were prosecuted in connection with the event.

In a trial, 28 police officers had to answer in court for the two nightly raids.

you were perverted

accused of using excessive force and concealing evidence.

45 civil servants were also investigated for mistreatment.

It should not have been the last G8 summit with serious riots.

© Luciano Del Castillo/dpa

9 / 14Because in 2007 the violence at the 33rd G8 summit in Heiligendamm continued.

While the heads of state and government of the eight largest industrial nations were conferring in the Grand Hotel Heiligendamm, major protests against the G8 escalated, including the opening demonstration in Rostock.

Triggered by militant demonstrators, street battles broke out between the police and autonomists, with almost 1,000 injured.

Estimates of attendance vary from 25,000 to 80,000.

Apart from this peaceful demonstration, there were serious clashes between about 2,000 autonomists of the so-called "black block" and 5,000 police officers.

Barricades were erected and set on fire, stones were thrown at police vehicles.

The forces then used water cannons - against militant, but also against peaceful demonstrators.

According to the police, the aim was to drive the protesters away from the rally site and thus enable the fires to be extinguished.

© Kay Nietfeld/dpa

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10 / 14During the G8 summit in Heiligendamm around 1000 demonstrators are said to have been arrested.

On the day the summit began, several thousand demonstrators managed to get close to the practice fence and block all access routes, despite the ban on the demo.

An alleged police instigator is said to have photographed demonstrators during the blockade.

The alleged "agent provocateur" is said to have instigated the demo.

There were similar allegations against law enforcement officers years earlier during the orgies of violence in Genoa.

After initially denying any use of plainclothes officers, the police later admitted that the man excluded from the demonstration was a plainclothes officer.

In addition, a man lost his left sight during a water server operation in front of the conference site.

11 / 14The title of this picture shows the G20 demonstrations in Hamburg in 2017.

On 07.07.

a woman climbed onto the front hood of the police special car "SW4" at the Gorch-Fock-Wall in Hamburg and was then sprayed with pepper spray by two Hessian police officers.

There had been three criminal complaints about the incident, all three had been checked.

The public prosecutor assessed the actions of the police officers as lawful.

At least eight separate protest actions and demonstrations took place in Hamburg over the period of six days.

Some of these were peaceful in nature, while others had the opposite goal.

By far the most brutal protest action was the "Welcome to Hell" demo on July 6, the day before the start of the conference, which was attended by an estimated 12,000 people.

© Sebastian Willnow/dpa

12 / 14The "Welcome to Hell" demonstration at the G20 summit in Hamburg was quickly opposed by many riot police and several water cannons.

The police said they tried to separate the left-wing autonomist black bloc from the peaceful demonstrators, but were unsuccessful.

Many autonomous people took off their masks when asked, but not all.

The officials then advanced very robustly.

Some of the protesters and autonomists fled in panic from the officials.

The mood was heated, there were injuries, bottles were flying, the police used water cannon and pepper spray.

An employee of the on-site legal emergency service commented on what happened with the words: "It was definitely not legal".

According to consistent reports, no violence emanated from the demonstrators.

13 / 14It was different on the morning of July 7, 2017, when hooded figures walked along the posh Elbchaussee in Hamburg, threw firecrackers and set cars on fire.

Then special police forces stormed the Schanzenviertel.

13 people were arrested in the large-scale operation.

In the traditionally left Schanzenviertel, a civilian officer fired a warning shot.

On the day of the G20 summit, the police spoke of around 3,500 violent criminals on the streets of Hamburg.

While several demonstrations in the neighborhood were non-violent, the police in the Altona district engaged in skirmishes with violent criminals who, according to official information, attacked officials with iron bars and Molotov cocktails.

The balance sheet: A head of operations initially spoke of 476 injured officers, but later it turned out

that this number was inflated with sick leave and the like and is not necessarily related to violence against officials.

455 officers were ready for action again the following day, two were considered seriously injured.

There was no official information on the total number of injured demonstrators.

The G20 meeting in Rome in 2021 proves that there is another way. © Axel Heimken/dpa

14 / 14A large proportion of the demonstrators against the G20 summit in Rome came from the ranks of Fridays for Future.

They protested peacefully for more climate protection and participation.

A demo train of 5,000 to 6,000 people set off.

The police presence was huge, police officers with signs and helicopters made their rounds over the demo.

Numerous water cannons were on site.

The goal was clear: Italy didn't want any pictures of chaos, rioting and devastation, such as those from the G20 summit in Hamburg or years earlier from Genoa.

The government from Rome had requested over 5,000 additional security forces.

Even the military was in action and additionally secured important places.

But the fears turned out to be unfounded.

Dancing and drumming, the demonstrators marched around two kilometers through the city.

After a rally, they went back the same way.

All of this happened without the intervention of the security forces.

© Matteo Nardone via www.imago-images.de

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-06-14

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