From: Barry Stoller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [R-G] Huge demos across the world Reuters. 13 October 2001. Anti-American Riots Rock Nigeria, Protest Elsewhere. KANO, Nigeria -- At least 16 people were killed in Nigeria in anti-American riots on Saturday and thousands of demonstrators joined peace marches in London and Berlin. Nigerian authorities ordered police to shoot on sight and clamped a night curfew on Kano, the biggest city in the mainly Muslim north, after some of the most violent anti-American protests in Africa since U.S. air strikes on Afghanistan began. Army tanks criss-crossed the streets to quell riots which followed a pattern of Muslim-Christian clashes that have killed thousands in oil-producing Nigeria over the past two years. "There is rampant shooting in the streets," said resident Jibrin Idris, who said he was trapped in a building with scores of people in the city's commercial district. "Churches, mosques and shops are on fire. There is smoke everywhere," he said by telephone. In London, Muslims and Christians marched side by side in a protest against the bombing of Afghanistan that attracted more than 20,000 people, according to police estimates. "We're here because there are thousands of people across Britain who know that the bombing of Afghanistan is not going to put an end to terrorism," said Carol Naughton, chairman of the protest organizers, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Germany also saw its biggest protest so far against the air strikes, launched a week ago in retaliation for the attacks on the United States last month that killed around 5,500 people. Protest organizers said some 30,000 people turned out in Berlin. Protesters came from some 140 different groups, including from far-left Marxist parties. "The horror of World War Two makes all of us in Germany leery of war," said physician Hannes Wand, 54, at the rally held under blue skies and unusually warm autumn weather. "I'm against this war because it's not justified and innocent people are being killed and forced to flee their homes." In Berlin, there were minor scuffles with police as protesters marched through the central government quarter and past the Brandenburg Gate, foreign ministry and city hall. Banners read: "War is genocide," "War is not the solution" and "Stop Bush's war." Singers performed anti-war folk songs of the 1960s from the backs of flat-bed trucks. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder criticized the peace rally. Police said an estimated 5,000 people protested in the Swiss capital Berne, and about 4,000 in the southwest German city of Stuttgart. Smaller protests were held in other parts of the non-Islamic world, including Australia. In Nigeria, the army moved tanks into Kano's Sabon Gari market area early on Saturday after Christian churches and mosques were set on fire in rioting on Friday. Community leaders said rioters killed at least six female school students on their way to take university entrance exams. Police said they found another two bodies in the street, one hacked by a machete, and a witness said he was seeking refuge in a police station when eight more bodies were brought in. Mike Idika, a leader of the predominantly Christian Igbo community, which accounts for most of city's merchants, said more than 200 people were injured and sent to hospital. Local residents said the protests were hijacked by hoodlums from the city's army of unemployed youth, who chanted "May God destroy America!" and "Americans are terrorists." Brandishing posters of bin Laden, they burned American flags and effigies of President Bush and Nigerian Foreign Minister Sule Lamido, who has backed the U.S. attacks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews with continuing coverage of WWIII _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
