Tear gas, rubber pellets fired at G8 protests

Anti-riot agents have fired volleys of tear gas and rubber pellets at anti-globalisation demonstrators.

Thousands of protesters clashed with police near the Group of Eight summit in Evian, France and in Switzerland today, blocking roads and bridges and setting fire to barricades.

The most violent protests were in Lausanne, across Lake Geneva from the G8 summit site. Demonstrators wearing black masks and other face coverings hurled stones at police and a luxury hotel and looted a petrol station and a supermarket.

It was unclear how many arrests there were, but police were seen apprehending several protesters.

The morning protests kicked off a day of demonstrations scheduled to coincide with the arrival in Evian of most of the leaders of the world’s seven industrial powers and Russia. Two marches, one from Annemasse in France and one from Geneva, were to start before noon and converge near the Franco-Swiss border.

In Annemasse, a town west of Evian approved as a protest point, demonstrators blocked a road leading to the summit site with a burning barricade. About 100 riot police fired constant streams of tear gas to stop them from breaking the security cordon and heading towards Evian.

The anti-G8 protesters, which authorities had predicted could number as many as 50,000, represent a mishmash of causes, from anti-globalisation to relief of Third World debt and protection of the environment. They accuse the G8 of profiting by exploiting the world’s poorer nations.

Swiss police said on Saturday that they were taking a cautious approach, hoping to avoid the clashes with demonstrators at the 2001 summit in Genoa, Italy, when one demonstrator was killed by police.

More than 1,000 protesters gathered in Geneva early today, blocking the city’s main bridge – the Mont-Blanc – and several others with burning barricades made of rubbish cans and other items. The crowd was mostly peaceful, though some threw stones through the windows of an employment agency and spray-painted “slave-trader” on its walls.

Cars attempting to cross the bridges were turned away as the sun rose over the Alps. Riot police were on hand, but did not intervene. As the crowd grew, however, the atmosphere turned tense, and police were stopping passers-by from getting between them and the protesters.

In Lausanne, police fired rubber pellets and tear gas into the air to keep a crowd of protesters from the lakeside zone where leaders from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America invited to the summit were staying.

Most of the 1,000 or so demonstrators were peaceful, but a core of about 200 wearing black ski masks and other face coverings knocked down phone booths and tore down signs. They threw large stones at the luxury Hotel Royal and at police guarding the Olympic Museum.

They also looted a construction site for scaffolding and bars, presumably to build the barricades they were constructing on several streets. Rioters ransacked an Esso petrol station, stealing sweets and cigarettes that they then handed out to people watching the demonstration, and broke into a supermarket.

On the road between Geneva and Lausanne, demonstrators were blocking traffic. As noon approached, demonstrators filtered out of the city, apparently toward an ”anti-globalisation camp” they had set up west of town.

Police in Lausanne said they were in the process of withdrawing approval for a demonstration in the city later today.

“The demonstrators are spread out in several places throughout the south of the town and they are carrying out systematic attacks on the forces of order,” said Jean-Christophe Sauterel, police spokesman for the Vaud Canton (state).

Outside of Annemasse early today, about 1,500 demonstrators gathered on the main road leading west to the summit site.

The protesters set up steel barricades on the road and lit a bonfire, shouting slogans and unfurling a banner that read, “Stop: Danger G8.” A clutch of demonstrators threw stones at the 100 police, who responded with a constant stream of tear gas, and bursts of water cannon.

Thousands of protesters, including left-leaning labour unions, later converged at the start of the march route in Annemasse. They were to meet up with other marchers from the Swiss side of the border and then finish their march in French territory later in the day.

In addition to Russia, the G8 includes the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada.