------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 19, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
EYEWITNESS EVIAN & GENEVA: MASSIVE PROTESTS ROCK SWITZERLAND AND FRANCE
By Sarah Sloan Geneva, Switzerland
It was no surprise that the June 1-3 meetings of leaders of the seven richest imperialist countries in the world--France, the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan, Canada and Italy--together with Russia, were a target of protest for all people who seek social and economic justice.
The protests were stronger than expected and a sign that the vast anti- war movement that sprung up in Europe in the winter and early spring was still ready for struggle.
Originally called the G-7 when formed in 1975, this group was to direct the capitalist world's major financial institutions. Known as the G-8 since Russia's addition, it is responsible for the neo-liberal policies that constitute attacks on workers' rights, lower living conditions for the vast majority of the world's population and environmental harm.
A "Week of Resistance" that started May 28 in the cities surrounding Evian, France--including Geneva and Lau sanne, Switzerland, and Annemasse, France--was the first major protest in the world since the U.S./UK declaration of "victory" in Iraq and implementation of the occupation.
For all progressive forces in Europe, these protests were an opportunity to continue the struggle--against the war, the occupation and corporate globalization--that had grown so massive in the fall, winter and spring.
Organizers expected a turnout in the range of 30,000 people. They recognized that Switzerland did not have a history of massive protests. The trade unions and many progressive organizations in France were deeply preoccupied with protests and strikes surrounding critical issues of pensions, wages and domestic social programs.
But almost 100,000 marched from Geneva and a comparable group from Annemasse to join up at the French-Swiss border. Several thousand others demonstrated in Lausanne or marched from Annemasse toward Evian. This turnout of almost 200,000 is of great and lasting significance for all progressive people and organizations throughout Europe.
SUNDAY, JUNE 1: GENEVA, EVIAN AND LAUSANNE
At about 5 a.m. on Sunday, June 1, a delegation from Youth & Student ANSWER in the United States marched with hundreds from a Geneva campsite to join thousands of others who formed blockades at all the city's main bridges. People removed wooden boards covering up shop windows and used them, along with benches, street signs and other materials, to block the bridges.
Thousands more arrived starting around 10 a.m. to join a massive three- hour-long march to the French border, where they met with tens of thousands more.
That same day at around 5:30 a.m., about 5,000 people began a march from Annemasse, France, to Evian. At St. Cergues, about 2 miles from the starting point, police tear-gassed the demonstrators. While a heavy police attack continued with tear gas, water cannons and concussion grenades, some demonstrators blockaded the road leading to Evian.
Local people actively supported the demonstrators by bringing out water and lemons to help against the tear gas. Protesters succeeded in blocking this critical road to the summit for two hours before police pushed them back.
In Lausanne, Switzerland--directly across Lake Leman (Lake Geneva) from Evian--another march began at around 7 a.m. in defiance of the many riot police attempting to block the route with water cannons, tear gas and stun grenades. The police eventually forced that march back to its campsite in Lausanne.
Police blocked all exit routes to the campsite and demanded identity checks of everyone in the camp, though Swiss law does not require people to carry around identification. The majority of the people in the camp were arrested, and some were severely beaten.
During the Lausanne demonstration, the police attacked a bridge blockade that included a rope stretched along the bridge with activists hanging on both sides. Knowing that they were hundreds of feet from the ground, the police cut the rope. Martin Shaw, an activist from England, fell to the ground, suffering life-threatening injuries. He is now in stable condition.
JUNE 2--UNANTICIPATED MASS PARTICIPATION
On Monday, June 2, several hundred people from Switzerland joined others who were still in Geneva in a march there. At about 6:30 p.m., two marches, each with a few hundred people, met up in an intersection in downtown Geneva near the train station.
When the police accompanying the march drove away, the protesters regrouped and made a decision to begin marching south towards the bridge. But as they began marching, large numbers of police vehicles-- including ones filled with suited-up riot police with gas masks and water cannons--began assembling.
The police equipment included empty vans and buses, presumably to remove the demonstrators. Police on foot and in vehicles began moving in to encircle the demonstration, which was blocking the bridge.
Police from Geneva and Zurich and some of the 14,000 German cops present for the protests moved into the area in force, with several water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets.
As police moved in to block the protest from all four sides of an intersection, passersby began to gather in large numbers. They stopped to watch the police action and the protest. As one Geneva resident remarked, "This is not usual here."
The vast majority outside police lines were Geneva residents who had stopped to watch on their way home from work. Many were enjoying the evening, drinking beer and wine and eating fast food, smoking, standing with their friends. Women in skirts and high heels pondered whether to move on to a bar or to stay. People were talking to friends on cell phones, joking and laughing, and enjoying a new form of entertainment with their friends, girlfriends and boyfriends, children and dogs.
As it became increasingly clear that the police would only let the group of 500 trapped demonstrators leave if they were under arrest, the crowd began to chant in their support. In French, they chanted to the police "Let them pass, go fuck yourselves." Later, the chant "Fuck the police" caught on in English.
The situation became untenable for the police. Despite their large numbers and massive instruments of repression, they faced thousands of angry Geneva residents, a group largely composed of youth and people of color who, instead of moving on with their evening, were growing in numbers and militancy.
To arrest the demonstrators, they would have to move through thousands of local people. Each time a Swiss police officer tried to raise his bullhorn to order the crowd to disperse, people would scream and boo. When he finally succeeded in declaring the gathering illegal and ordering everyone to disperse, no one left.
Soon, a water cannon that had been pointed at the trapped demonstrators was turned around, at first as if to leave, but then it began firing on the crowd. People moved back at first, but most returned, some walking directly into the water. People threw fire crackers, as well as bottles and metal rods, at the water cannon.
When the water cannons didn't disperse the crowd, police began firing rounds of rubber bullets, hitting some people in the legs and ankles. Hundreds of bullets were fired at the crowd. Many ran out of range, but others continued to talk, smoke and kiss. Some left, but many would return as soon as the firing let up and begin to move back towards the police line to pick up bullets.
Suddenly, the air seemed full of flames. At first it appeared they might be coming from firecrackers that protesters had been throwing earlier. But soon the area was overwhelmed with tear gas that affected people's ability to see and breathe. While many ran away from the police lines, some were able to escape into apartment buildings opened by residents to aid the crowd, and others fled into restaurants.
Eventually, using the gas that people were totally unprepared for, the police reached the train station and surrounded it. People arriving in Geneva from out of town were greeted with police orders to evacuate the train station. People exiting through the front doors of the station were the target of water cannons. Those remaining from the original crowd were forced north, east and west of the train station, unable to return south because of the heavy police presence in the area.
On Friday, June 6, coordinated demonstrations took place throughout Europe protesting Swiss, French and German police brutality.
Mobilize against war, colonial occupation and imperialism
Prior to the massive demonstrations that took place, the Youth & Student ANSWER delegation had spoken at meetings hosted by anti-war and anti- globalization organizations that had traveled from all over Europe and the world to converge in Geneva and Annemasse.
The ANSWER representatives addres sed meetings of the anti-globalization group Attac-Germany and of the Swiss youth groups No War and Movement for Socialism. They also spoke at an International Anti-War Assembly that featured George Galloway, a member of the British Parliament and an outspoken opponent of the war on Iraq, and representatives from the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
These protests followed months when millions of people, through their own actions, had helped change the political climate in the world by focusing global opposition on the U.S. government's drive to endless war.
The Bush administration, in fact, has in recent days announced that there was no "Iraq war" but only the battle of Iraq in a bigger war. By this he means that Washington intends to continue to wage war, under the false slogan of the so-called war on terrorism, on any government that asserts its independence.
Not only has Bush threatened new confrontations with Iran, Korea, Cuba and Zimbabwe, and sent troops to the Philippines and Colombia, but the U.S./British war in Iraq itself is far from over. The people of Iraq did not and will never view the occupation of their country and the elimination of their sovereignty as a benevolent act of liberation.
To support the resistance in Iraq, which demands that the U.S. and British occupiers leave, not tomorrow, but today, the ANSWER Coalition has rallied thousands of organizers and activists in the United States to embrace a new slogan. For the next phase of the anti-war movement, this will be: "Organize against war, colonial occupation and imperialism."
A few years ago, such slogans may have seemed like rhetoric, but today the Bush administration's ultra-militaristic and transparently expansionist world strategy reveals the imperialist objectives of the war itself.
In this spirit, the ANSWER Coalition is working with anti-war organizations in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America to carry out coordinated actions. This includes an Internationally Coordinated Day of Action in Solidarity with All Those who Resist on Sept. 27, and an International March on the Pentagon under the slogan "The World Unites Against U.S. Imperialism" on Oct. 25.
[The ANSWER youth delegation included Peta Lindsay, Sarah Sloan, Caneisha Mills, Sarah Friedman and Ben Becker. This article is based on their experiences and on Independent Media Center reports.]
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