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http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030320212617.hn7pepkr.htmlhttp://www.spacewar.com/2003/030320212617.hn7pepkr.html
Tens of thousands in French anti-war demo outside Paris US embassy
PARIS (AFP) Mar 20, 2003
Tens of thousands of anti-war activists thronged outside the US embassy in Paris and throughout France on Wednesday to protest the US-led attack on Iraq, with some denouncing it as a crime against humanity.
Sporting stickers and placards calling for an end to the military strikes, and chanting "Bush's war is not about democracy, it's about dictatorship," some 80,000 people massed peacefully on the central Place de la Concorde on the banks of the river Seine.
Thousands of police were deployed to guard the adjacent US embassy, which was closed to the public until the weekend as a security precaution.
Denouncing the bombing raids on Baghdad, Pernin, a student from a Paris suburb who would only give his first name, wished diplomacy had been given more time. He predicted a "massacre" among Iraqi civilians.
"There will be a massacre. You can't resuscitate the dead. Governments can change, but you can't bring the dead back to life," he said.
Amy Laskin, newly arrived in France from Washington -- her plane took off Wednesday as air raid sirens sounded for the first time over Baghdad -- said the United States had to get its priorities straight.
US President George W. Bush "needs to go after who really attacked us" on September 11, 2001, she said, instead of trying to find a scapegoat for the strikes on New York and Washington.
Some members of Bush's administration have linked the terrorist attacks to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Laskin wore a button calling herself a "Citizen of the Evil Empire" in allusion to former president Ronald Reagan's infamous characterization of the Soviet Union.
"I think today by attacking Iraq, we've become the evil empire," she said.
Youssef Courbag, a Lebanese citizen who moved to Paris from Beirut 13 years ago, angrily dismissed Bush's describing the attack as an attempt to liberate Iraq from a dictator and bring democracy to the Iraqi people.
"Great, can you imagine 100,000 or 200,000 dead becoming democrats? That's a calculation that does not make sense," he said.
"Plus, if you are combatting anti-democratic regimes, why not fight the ones in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, or dictatorships in Asia, South America or Africa? This is about regional power, this is about oil, not about democracy."
The demonstration in Paris was peaceful on the whole, except for one incident in which several students threw rocks at a McDonalds, breaking the windows of the restaurant, an AFP journalist reported. No one was injured.
Smaller demonstrations also occurred around the country, bringing some 20,000 altogether into the streets of Marseille, Toulouse and Bordeaux in the south, Lyon in the southeast, Strasbourg in the east and Rennes in the west.
Dozens of anti-war organizations and leftist political parties have called a massive demonstration for Saturday at the Place de la Republique, a traditional starting point for protests in the capital. On February 15, close to a quarter of a million people gathered at the same square against the then looming war.
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