Atelier No.19, article 32
 
 

Associated Press Dispatches:
© International Herald Tribune, July 21, 2001
 

 
                                              Day One: City Center Becomes War Zone

                                   GENOA The death of an anti-G-8 protester here on Friday, the
                                   first fatality since the big anti-globalization protests began in Seattle
                                   19 months ago, touched off fresh rage on the streets of this Italian
                                   port city.

                                   The death occurred during a wild daylong melee, with
                                   demonstrators who were trying to disrupt a meeting of the world's
                                   richest nations hurling firebombs and stones at riot police, who
                                   fired water cannon and tear gas to drive them back from the site of
                                   the summit meeting.

                                   Emergency services said more than 100 people had been injured
                                   in several hours of clashes as thousands of protesters converged
                                   on the heavily guarded city center.

                                   As clashes continued, hundreds of protesters jeered police and
                                   battered a police van escorting the ambulance carrying away the
                                   corpse of the young man who was killed, apparently in a clash
                                   with the police.

                                   The angry crowd had gathered as the body lay in a pool of blood
                                   under a white sheet for more than an hour as coroners made an
                                   initial inquiry.

                                   The crowd vented its rage at a 200-strong detachment of
                                   carabinieri. As the body was lifted into the ambulance, there was a
                                   brief round of commemorative applause and then the clashes
                                   resumed.

                                   Some protesters, many in tears, then began to move away from
                                   the immediate vicinity.

                                   The dead man was not immediately identified by police. Witnesses
                                   gave conflicting accounts of the death, some saying the man had
                                   been shot, others saying he had been beaten by the police. One
                                   witness, Fabio Cardella, said some demonstrators near one of the
                                   city's main train stations were throwing rocks at police vehicles
                                   when he saw a man suddenly drop to the pavement. A police
                                   vehicle then appeared to run the man over, he said.

                                   There was no official word on the circumstances of the death. But
                                   a paramedic, Paolo Cremonesi, said that the man had been around
                                   20 years old and had bled profusely from the head.

                                   Several hours later, at the same spot where the protester was
                                   killed, about 200 demonstrators fought a pitched battle with about
                                   the same number of police, throwing bricks and bottles and
                                   screaming "Assassins!" The police responded with new volleys of
                                   tear gas.

                                   As the crowd dispersed, protesters heaped red flowered plants -
                                   ripped out from a nearby public garden - on the spot where the
                                   victim died. Someone placed a piece of notebook paper with the
                                   words "Made in G-8" on the sawdust that covered the
                                   bloodstains. The paper was held in place by an empty tear-gas
                                   canister.

                                   President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi of Italy, arriving in Genoa for a
                                   state dinner with summit participants, said he was shocked and
                                   saddened by the death, and pleaded with demonstrators "to
                                   immediately cease this blind violence."

                                   The clashes erupted in several parts of the city almost
                                   simultaneously as small groups of demonstrators - sometimes
                                   dozens, sometimes hundreds - broke away from a large main
                                   march to confront police on the edges of the restricted zone.
                                   Demonstrators ripped up cobblestones to hurl at riot police,
                                   smashed windows and threw firebombs.

                                   The riots were a violent offshoot of peaceful demonstrations by
                                   tens of thousands of marchers - representing trade unions,
                                   environmentalists, farmers, anarchists and the unemployed - who
                                   descended on Genoa to express anger over the ill effects of
                                   globalization and the widening gap between rich and poor.

                                   Only blocks from the medieval palace where eight world leaders
                                   including President George W. Bush met, demonstrators made a
                                   determined bid to breach a high steel-mesh security barricade,
                                   hurling themselves against it and managing to open a narrow gap in
                                   one section of the double-layered fence.

                                   But they were immediately driven back by drenching jets from a
                                   water cannon - fired point-blank by police from the other side -
                                   before any could get through. Inside the sealed-off "red zone"
                                   surrounding the summit sites, riot police scrambled to erect new
                                   barriers.

                                   White clouds of choking tear gas and black smoke from trash-can
                                   fires wafted over Genoa's medieval old town as the fighting raged.
                                   Witnesses said about 200 people smashed windows at a bank,
                                   and protesters hurled computers and other office equipment out of
                                   nearby offices into the streets.