OT Protesters Clash with Police at IMF Meeting
They approached the Congress Center via Lumirova but were push back down towards Slavojova where I leave. Let me go home and see how it looks there. (Hope my car does not look too captalist :-)
By REUTERS
(AFP)
Globalization opponents march in downtown Prague during mass protests against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meeting.
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RAGUE -- Black-clad demonstrators hurled Molotov cocktails and cobblestones torn from Prague's historic streets at police Tuesday as they tried to shut down annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
The protests were the ugliest since demonstrations against the threat of globalization began here at the weekend. One group pelted police with a hail of bottles and rocks and several police were set alight when a petrol bomb exploded.
Their colleagues extinguished the flames with water cannon.
Czech officials said dozens of people had been injured, from both sides of the confrontation. Those hurt seriously enough to be treated by emergency services had injuries including a broken leg and burns from the fire bomb.
Most of the clashes took place in narrow, cobbled streets some 300 meters (yards) from the conference center where the IMF meetings are taking place. Police in full body armor responded with tear gas, water canons and stun grenades, filling the air with dense purple and orange smoke.
But some 50 demonstrators made it to within sight of the reporters and delegates gathering outside the Congress Center for a better view. ``Our world is not for sale,'' one protest banner read. ``Open up the borders, smash the IMF,'' they chanted, as police watched nervously.
One man, dressed from head to toe in black, burned an American flag.
Activists had vowed to protest in a non-violent way, blockading delegates inside the building and refusing to let them leave until they agree to abolish the World Bank and the IMF. They say the global lenders do more harm than good in the world's poorest nations.
Eyewitnesses also reported a standoff with police across the bridge from the Congress Center, a glass-fronted building which housed party conferences on Cold War days.
``We're going down this street, and if there are police we're going to push through,'' said one of the demonstrators at the bridge, which was closed to traffic.
Police said there were up to 9,000 activists, but that was still far fewer than the 20,000 organizers had hoped to attract to Prague in a follow-up rally to protests which crippled world trade talks in Seattle last year and prompted violence in London in May.
``London, Seattle. Continue the battle,'' chanted one group marching through Prague's central Wenceslas Square, the scene of peaceful demonstrations which helped toppled Communism in 1989. ``Capitalism kills. Kill capitalism,'' another group said.
Other marchers, most of them foreign, kept their cool in the valley below the center, waving banners that demanded the cancellation of debt to poor countries and the shutdown of the IMF.
The rest of Prague was unusually quiet, and policemen -- 11,000 are ready to defend the congress center -- stood every twenty meters on main streets, where boarded up shops presented an eerie morning scene.
Police have also closed the metro station adjoining the conference center and they were whisking delegates from their hotels in motorcades or on shuttle buses.
In early afternoon, as the demonstrations became angry, organizers halted shuttle bus service from some of the hotels and could give no time when the service might resume. |
