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F15 millions protest worldwide Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20030216/1026546.asphttp://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20030216/1026546.asp
DEMONSTRATIONS
Millions worldwide protest Iraq war
By ROBERT BARR
Associated Press
2/16/2003
LONDON - Millions of protesters - many of them marching in the capitals of America's traditional allies - demonstrated Saturday against possible U.S. plans to attack Iraq.
In a global outpouring of anti-war sentiment, Rome claimed the biggest turnout - 1 million, according to police, while organizers claimed three times that figure.
In London, at least 750,000 people demonstrated in what police called the city's largest demonstration ever.
Berlin had up to half-a-million people on the streets, and Paris had a crowd estimated at about 100,000.
In Spain, several million people turned out at anti-war rallies in about 55 cities and towns across the country, with more than 500,000 each attending rallies in Madrid and Barcelona.
In New York, rally organizers estimated the crowd at up to 500,000 people near the U.N. headquarters on the East Side. City police provided no estimate of the crowd, which stretched 20 blocks deep and two blocks wide.
"Peace! Peace! Peace!" Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa said while leading an ecumenical service.
"Let America listen to the rest of the world - and the rest of the world is saying, "Give the inspectors time.' "
The rally was opened by singer Richie Havens performing "Freedom," just as he did 34 years earlier at the original Woodstock Festival. Speakers included Susan Sarandon, Harry Belafonte and Pete Seeger.
Fifty arrests were made and two protesters were hospitalized - one with an epileptic seizure and another who had diabetes, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. Eight officers also were injured, including a mounted police officer who was pulled off his horse and beaten, Kelly said.
The New York rally was the largest of an estimated 150 peace rallies across the nation that filled city streets with banners, chanting and people from all walks of life.
Police in Colorado Springs, Colo., fired tear gas at protesters, sending at least two to a hospital, and made arrests after the demonstrators blocked a major thoroughfare near an Air Force base.
In Los Angeles, activist actors Martin Sheen and Mike Farrell and director Rob Reiner were among the thousands of chanting marchers who filled Hollywood Boulevard from curb to curb for four blocks. Organizers estimated the crowd at 100,000; police put it at 30,000.
"None of us can stop this war . . . There is only one guy that can do that and he lives in the White House," said Sheen, who plays a fictitious U.S. president on NBC's "The West Wing."
London's marchers hoped - in the words of keynote speaker the Rev. Jesse Jackson - to "turn up the heat" on Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush's staunchest European ally.
Rome protesters showed their disagreement with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's support for Bush, while demonstrators in Paris and Berlin backed the skeptical stances of their governments.
"What I would say to Mr. Blair is stop toadying up to the Americans and listen to your own people, us, for once," said Elsie Hinks, 77, who marched in London with her husband, Sidney, a retired Church of England priest.
Tommaso Palladini, 56, who traveled from Milan to Rome, said, "You don't fight terrorism with a preventive war. You fight terrorism by creating more justice in the world."
Several dozen marchers from Genoa held up pictures of Iraqi artists.
"We're carrying these photos to show the other face of the Iraqi people that the TV doesn't show," said Giovanna Marenzana, 38.
Some leaders in German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government participated in the Berlin protest, which turned the tree-lined boulevard between the Brandenburg Gate and the 19th-century Victory Column into a sea of banners and balloons emblazoned with "No war in Iraq" and demonstrators swaying to live music. "We Germans in particular have a duty to do everything to ensure that war - above all a war of aggression - never again becomes a legitimate means of policy," shouted Friedrich Schorlemmer, a Lutheran pastor and former East German pro-democracy activist.
In the Paris crowd at the Place Denfert-Rochereau, a large American flag bore the black inscription, "Leave us alone."
Gerald Lenoir, 41, of Berkeley, Calif., came to Paris to support demonstrators.
"I am here to protest my government's aggression against Iraq," he said. "Iraq does not pose a security threat to the United States, and there are no links with al-Qaida."
Police estimated that 60,000 turned out in Oslo, Norway; 50,000 in bitter cold in Brussels, Belgium; and about 35,000 in frigid Stockholm, Sweden.
About 80,000 marched in Dublin, Irish police said.
Crowds were estimated at 60,000 in Seville, Spain; 40,000 in Bern, Switzerland; 30,000 in Glasgow, Scotland; 25,000 in Copenhagen, Denmark; 15,000 in Vienna, Austria; more than 20,000 in Montreal and 15,000 in Toronto; 5,000 in Cape Town and 4,000 in Johannesburg in South Africa; 5,000 in Tokyo; and 2,000 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
In Mexico City, as many as 10,000 people - including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu - snarled traffic for blocks before rallying near the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy.
In Baghdad, tens of thousands of Iraqis, many carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles, demonstrated to support leader Saddam Hussein and denounce the United States.
"Our swords are out of their sheaths, ready for battle," read one of hundreds of banners carried by marchers along Palestine Street.
In Damascus, the capital of neighboring Syria, an estimated 200,000 protesters chanted anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli slogans while marching to the People's Assembly.
Najjah Attar, a former Syrian cabinet minister, accused Washington of attempting to change the region's map.
"The U.S. wants to encroach upon our own norms, concepts and principles," she said. "They are reminding us of the Nazi and fascist times."
An estimated 2,000 Israelis and Palestinians marched together Saturday night in Tel Aviv against war.
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