- LONDON (Reuters) - A wave
of anti-war protests began to roll across Europe and the Middle East on
Thursday after the opening salvos of the war against Iraq sparked angry
demonstrations in Asia and Australia.
-
- Barely three hours after the first U.S. missiles struck
Baghdad, a crowd that organizers put at 40,000 and which police said numbered
"tens of thousands" brought Australia's second largest city,
Melbourne, to a standstill.
-
- In Germany, 50,000 school students marched from Berlin's
central Alexanderplatz past the guarded U.S. embassy and through the Brandenburg
Gate.
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- The crowd whistled and chanted and carried banners saying
"Stop the Bush fire," "George W. Hitler," "No
blood for oil."
-
- "The war is illegal and it should be resolved by
the United Nations," said 18-year-old David Stassek, carrying a banner
that read: "Stop U.S. imperialism." Pia Telschow, a 14-year-old
from Berlin, said: "Bush is just carrying on his father's war."
-
- Bigger demonstrations were planned for later on Thursday
in the capital and in dozens of other towns and cities. Some 5,000 pupils
were also demonstrating in Cologne.
-
- In France, the most vocal Western opponent of the war,
a string of organisations planned a 1700 GMT rally outside the U.S. embassy
in Paris. The mission was barricaded off to the public by mid-morning and
surrounded with 15-20 police vans, a water cannon and scores of police,
some with riot shields.
-
- By midday a small group of pro-Iraqi protestors had gathered
at the adjacent Place de la Concorde and were joined by some 70 students
from an Iraqi secondary school who shouted "Bush-Blair Assassins!"
and other chants in Arabic.
-
- In Italy, anti-war activists and labor unions staged
demonstrations and downed tools. Protesters in Milan held a vigil in front
of the city's cathedral while in Venice and Rome groups of hundreds gathered
for spontaneous sit-ins.
-
- "We want to bring cities to a standstill,"
said Luca Casarini, one of the organizers. "We don't want people to
get used to the idea of war, to think it's normal."
-
- Thousands more were expected to take part in a march
to the U.S. embassy in Rome in the afternoon. Public sector workers declared
a day-long strike while Italy's three biggest unions, with a combined 11
million members, said they would strike for two hours to protest against
the attacks.
-
- In Greece, where there is bitter public and government
opposition to the attack on Iraq, the center of Athens was turned into
a huge protest arena. Nearly 10,000 people including many schoolchildren
gathered to march to the U.S. embassy. Greek police rushed reinforcements
to the embassy to protect it.
-
- BOYCOTT OF WORK AND SCHOOL
-
- British anti-war campaigners blocked roads, boycotted
schools and workplaces, and began gathering in public places.
-
- "I am surprised how quickly the protests have kicked
off," John Rees, of the umbrella Stop the War Coalition, said as he
dashed to a gathering in London's Parliament Square.
-
- In Spain, several hundred chanting demonstrators gathered
outside the U.S. embassy in Madrid.
-
- Austria's capital Vienna saw a protest march by thousands
of schoolchildren. Some 20 towns in Switzerland were preparing for demonstrations,
with students and school pupils boycotting studies.
-
- ANGER IN THE MIDDLE EAST
-
- In the Gaza Strip, Palestinian children marched in the
Rafah refugee camp, holding Iraqi flags and posters of Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein, and setting fire to Israeli and U.S. flags.
-
- About 150 people marched in the West Bank city of Bethlehem
waving Iraqi and Palestinian flags and carrying portraits of Saddam.
-
- Egyptian police in Cairo's central Tahrir Square beat
back protesters trying to reach the nearby U.S. embassy and cordoned off
the area, restoring order, security sources said.
-
- Australia, a staunch ally of the United States, deployed
armed police for the first time around parliament in Canberra and increased
their presence at U.S. diplomatic missions.
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- ASIAN PROTESTS
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- Anti-American sentiment was stronger still in Muslim
Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan, where many saw the attack as the beginning
of an American campaign to subjugate the Islamic world and seize control
of oil.
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- In Pakistan there were scattered but peaceful rallies
across the country against what some called "American terrorism."
-
- Hundreds of people took to the streets of the commercial
hub of Karachi, the cities of Multan and Lahore, and Peshawar on the northwest
frontier with Afghanistan, as well as Rawalpindi.
-
- Indonesia's biggest rally was in Jakarta, where 2,000
people from a conservative Muslim party sang and chanted anti-American
slogans outside the heavily-fortified U.S. embassy. There were also protests
in the cities of Bandung, Yogyakarta and Makassar. Local radio said police
in the central Java city of Semarang had clashed with 50 students after
they burned an effigy of President Bush. Several students were slightly
hurt.
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