ATHENS, 21 March 2003 — Anti-war protests erupted across the globe yesterday following the start of the US-led war against Iraq, with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators demanding a quick end to airstrikes on Baghdad.
Some 200,000 demonstrators, many of them high school students, thronged central Athens in response to the launch of targeted strikes against Iraqi targets.
“It’s unprecedented,” said Vera Michailidou of leftist anti-globalization group Action 2003, one of the rally’s organizers, who estimated the turnout at least 200,000 and said the protests would continue into the evening. Police put the turnout in central Athens at 150,000.
The bulk of the demonstrators were high school students skipping classes to vent their anger against the start of the war on Baghdad. Most schools and universities in Athens canceled courses to allow students and professors to take part in the rally, called by Greece’s umbrella trade union.
The demonstrators marched past the British and toward the US Embassy, both of which were sealed off and protected by riot police in full gear.
“Bush: killer,” “American murderers,” they chanted, demanding that the Greek government shut down NATO bases in Greece serving the US-led military effort in Iraq.
Rallies were also reported in cities throughout the country, including Salonika and Patra, Greece’s second- and third-largest towns. Some 2,000 demonstrators were reported outside a key naval base on the Mediterranean island of Crete. In Salonika, around 5,000 high school students set a US flag on fire outside the US consulate.
Eleven non-governmental organizations, including the Greek sections of Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund (WWF), urged citizens to gather at 2000 GMT at the Memorial of the Unknown Soldier outside the Greek Parliament. The country’s umbrella trade union called for a nationwide work stoppage today, to be followed by yet another demonstration outside the US Embassy.
As Athens geared up for a second all-night vigil against military action in Iraq, protesters all over the world, led by students and schoolchildren, marched in anger at the way Washington and London have defied popular opposition to launch a second Gulf war.
Security has been stepped up at US embassies and consulates around the world — which have become systematic targets for anti-war protesters.
A demonstration in Ankara turned ugly when a group of peace activists disobeyed police orders to disperse after laying a black wreath outside the US Embassy.
At least one Spanish peace protester was injured in clashes with police in central Madrid, where 5,000 people, most of them students, tried to march on the parliament to voice their disapproval of their government’s support for the war.
In Barcelona, some 12,000 youthful protesters staged a blockade on the main highway leading to France, while a group of anti-war activists handed parliament a petition signed by some 1.2 million people opposed to their government’s backing for the war.
Several thousand French students left their classrooms to march through central Paris, before heading to the central Place de la Concorde, beside the US Embassy, where an AFP reporter estimated that at least 70,000 protesters had gathered by 1730 GMT.
At least 50,000 students in Berlin peacefully marched toward the US Embassy, carrying placards reading “Give peace a chance”. Peace groups said some 250 protests would be staged in Germany — where opposition to war in strong — throughout the day.
Thousands more students streamed out of classrooms across Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland and Spain, with Swiss schoolchildren carrying the rainbow-striped flags which have become a symbol for peace in Europe.
In Italy, where public opinion is strongly at odds with the official support for the US action, the main unions called a two-hour general strike starting at 3:00 p.m. (1400 GMT). Ten of thousands of students abandoned their classrooms and streamed onto city streets and piazzas to protest at the assault on Iraq, with rallies set to continue into the night. A demonstration in the business capital Milan drew 15,000 pacifists according to police, while the UIL union claimed a turnout of ten times that figure. In Rome, a torchlight procession was later expected to make its way to a peace rally at the Coliseum.
Portuguese peace activists planned to shroud the walls of an emblematic castle that towers over central Lisbon with a white sheet to protest the launch of US-led war against Iraq. A peace vigil was scheduled for 1800 GMT outside the US Embassy.
In Russia, two hundred Communists and ultra-nationalists — confronted by three times as many police — marched to cries of “Yankee go home” and “No to war”.
The day of anti-war protest kicked off with angry anti-US demonstrations in Indonesia and Taiwan and spirited marches in Australia, which has contributed some 2,000 troops to the US-led war coalition.
“US, please explain, why did you install Hussein?” chanted a crowd of some 20,000 protesters marching through Melbourne, Australia’s second biggest city.
One woman was arrested at the city’s US consulate for splashing red paint and scrawling “killing has started” on statues outside the building, police said. A crowd of more than 12,000 people chanting “No War, No War” marched through central Sydney, where 300,000 protesters rallied against the looming war last month.
More than 100,000 Germans, many of them pupils on time off from school, protested in cities across the country yesterday against the US-led war on Iraq.
In Berlin alone, at least 50,000 pupils and a range of other groups wound through the city center toward the US Embassy near the Brandenburg Gate, where security reinforcements stopped them getting any closer. It was the largest in around a dozen separate demonstrations in the capital, police said, with the main mass rally planned for 6:00 p.m. (1700 GMT).
In the southwest city of Stuttgart, near the headquarters of US forces in Europe, up to 15,000 demonstrated in the center.
In Rostock in the north the figure was 8,000, in Saarbruecken in the west it was 7,000 and 6,000 young people chanted and whistled outside the US consulate in the southern city of Munich.
Thousands more rallied in cities such as Bremen, Cologne, Erfurt, Frankfurt, Hanover, Heidelberg, Herne and Wattenscheid.
In Italy, hundreds of thousands of anti-war demonstrators swarmed onto city streets and piazzas across the country on a day of angry and sometimes solemn protest yesterday against the assault on Iraq.
In the business capital Milan, police said 15,000 pacifists took part in a somber protest as a sign of mourning over the outbreak of conflict. The UIL union claimed a turnout of ten times the police estimate. Italy’s three main trade unions called a two-hour general strike, beginning at 3:00 p.m. (1400 GMT) in protest at the war, as anti-war rallies were set to continue into the night.
Protests were held from early morning as classrooms were abandoned and tens of thousands of students streamed onto city streets. In Rome, around 2,000 students demonstrated near the US Embassy in the fashionable Via Veneto, chanting “No to War, No to Bombs”.
Police prevented the students from approaching the heavily guarded embassy. Many of the students waved the rainbow-colored peace flag, which has become a common sight in a country firmly opposed to a US-led military strike.
Police in the northern city of Turin said 20,000 students had taken to the streets for an anti-war rally in the city center.
Public opinion in Italy, expressed in a series of polls and massive anti-war demonstrations, is strongly at odds with the government’s backing for the US action.
Labor leaders said a major demonstration would be held later in the evening in the city’s Piazza Venezia, a symbolic venue because it was from his balcony overlooking the square that former dictator Benito Mussolini announced Italy’s entry into World War II.
In Paris, at least 10,000 anti-war protesters marched on the US Embassy. As news of the first hostilities sank in French authorities boosted security around the embassy in central Paris. Imposing steel barriers were in place before thousands of protesters marched to the adjacent Place de la Concorde, where revolutionaries beheaded the last French king in 1793.
An early morning protest near the US Embassy saw a small group of pro-Iraqi protesters joined by 70 students from an Iraqi secondary school who shouted “Bush, Blair, assassins” and other chants in Arabic.
