Police arrest more than 140 protesters

POLICE arrested more than 140 protesters who lay down in the middle of New York’s 5th Avenue during morning rush hour yesterday as part of a “die-in” to protest the US-led war on Iraq.

About 400 anti-war activists converged near Rockefeller Centre in midtown Manhattan, many of them lying on their backs near the intersection of 49th Street and 5th Avenue and others holding signs and chanting “No War, No Oil, No Profit”.

The two-hour peaceful protest, which closed part of 5th Avenue and snarled city traffic, was the latest of several acts of civil disobedience and anti-war demonstrations in New York and other large US cities.

Since last week, similar demonstrations have closed downtown San Francisco streets with a total of more than 2,000 people arrested.

“I’m against this illegal war of aggression,” said protester Daniel Grulich. “I think there are ways through diplomatic and multilateral action that we could have disarmed Saddam Hussein.”

Several of the demonstrators said they were also protesting media coverage of the week-long war and accused “corporate media of making profits off the war.”

Construction workers and office workers passing by engaged the demonstrators, saying things like “You don’t know what you are talking about” and “Go back to school.”

Demonstrators taking part in the “die-in” broke through police barricades along the famous avenue, lay on their backs in the street and waited for officers to remove them. Some were holding large photographs of civilian war victims.

Police officials at the scene said they arrested all of them, more than 140 people.

One group held a funeral march on the sidewalk for the death of US soldiers, those killed in the September 11, 2001, attacks and Iraqi civilians and troops.