To: TigerPaw who wrote (410520 ) 5/30/2003 6:27:53 PM From: Raymond Duray Respond to of 769670 IS THIS DEMOCRACY? STATE OF THE POLICE STATE REPORT -- news.independent.co.uk Geneva protesters to be kept 30 miles away By John Lichfield 31 May 2003 More than 50,000 anti-globalisation protesters are expected to demonstrate on the first day of the summit but they will not be allowed within 30 miles of Evian, on the south shore of Lake Geneva, where the world leaders are meeting. Two protest marches are planned tomorrow - one starting from Geneva and the other from the French town of Annemasse on the Franco-Swiss border. The two processions will unite for a joint demonstration at a frontier post, half-way between the two starting points. The organisers - a loose collection of anti-globalisers, anti-capitalists, anti-Americans and Third World activists joined by elements of the French left - say they are not expecting the kind of violent scenes that have occurred at other G8 and trade summits in recent years. Local people and the French security forces are less confident. Most shops in Annemasse and many in Geneva have been boarded up for the weekend. Given the threat of a possible terrorist attack, security for the summit is tight to the point of being almost paranoid. More than 16,000 soldiers, policemen, gendarmes, riot police, border guards and customs officers have been mobilised by France. More than half of them will be squashed into a one sq km zone - codenamed Zone Zero - around the summit campus at the Royal Parc and Hermitage hotels in Evian. Only senior members of national delegations will be allowed in. To get into Zone One - the rest of Evian and towns and villages for five miles around - people will have to be accredited as a journalist, official or local resident. Even residents will have to wear accreditation badges at all times. A wider area - Zone Two - will be banned to all but summit-goers and locals. Zone Three - 30 miles from Evian - will be open to protesters. Nearly 10,000 Swiss soldiers and policemen will also be on duty. About 100 French, Swiss. Italian and German warplanes will patrol overhead while patrol boats will defend the French shore of Lake Geneva from possible terrorist attack.