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Hamburg G20 Protests
Topic Started: Jul 6 2017, 02:21 PM (38 Views)
Webster
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Reuters: "Welcome To Hell" - Protesters Vow To Disrupt G20 Summit
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HAMBURG (Reuters) - "Welcome to Hell". That's the greeting for U.S. President Donald Trump and other world leaders from anti-capitalist protesters in Hamburg who aim to disrupt the G20 summit, already rife with tensions over trade and climate change.

Thousands of protesters from around Europe were pouring into the port city to join big demonstrations later. Police expected around 100,000 protesters in Hamburg, some 8,000 of whom are deemed by security forces to be ready to commit violence. This poses a challenge for those tasked with securing the July 7-8 summit of leaders of the world's 20 biggest economies, hosted by Chancellor Angela Merkel, who face tough talks on divisive issues including trade and climate change.

On the sidelines of the summit, Merkel will meet leaders including Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan and Trump, who in Poland called again on NATO partners to spend more on defense and said he would confront the threat from North Korea. Trump will also have his first session with Russian President Vladimir Putin after the U.S. leader called Russia's behavior "destabilizing", a description the Kremlin rejected.

Merkel, who is running for a fourth term in a September election, stressed on Thursday that she was committed to an open international trading system, despite fears of U.S. protectionism under Trump. "We're united in our will to strengthen multilateral relations at the G20 summit...We need an open society, especially open trade flows," she said in Berlin.

Several small demonstrations in Hamburg this week have passed off relatively peacefully. On Wednesday more than 7,000 mainly young and beer-drinking revelers staged a march waving placards denouncing capitalism and G20 leaders. But a fire overnight at a luxury Porsche car dealership in the north of the city that damaged eight vehicles could be a foretaste of what's to come. Police said they were investigating whether it was an arson attack linked to the summit.

Locals are unhappy with Merkel's decision to hold the summit in the center of Germany's second-largest city to show healthy democracies could tolerate protests, as they are worried about property damage by leftist militants.

After Hamburg authorities curbed camping by protesters, the St Pauli football club offered 200 sleeping places in their stadium as "a clear signal for human rights, freedom of expression and the right to demonstrate"

Up to 20,000 police officers will be on duty to watch over the main demonstration, dubbed "Welcome to Hell" by the alliance of anti-capitalist groups who organized it.

Protesters say the G20 has failed to solve many of the issues threatening world peace, including climate change, worsening inequality and violent conflicts.
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Webster
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Wasatch Storyteller & Resident Forum Curmudgeon
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(The Guardian) Arrests and injuries as Hamburg gripped by mass anti-G20 protests
--A day of violent clashes between police and protesters culminated on Friday evening with the bizarre spectacle of the heads of the world’s 20 leading economies listening to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy at the top of a shiny high-rise building while police used water cannons, teargas and speed boats to keep at bay an angry crowd of thousands.

Germany’s second-largest city had been eager to showcase its recently opened Elbphilharmonie concert hall to the rest of the world, but it may came to rue its ivory-tower symbolism after a week of chaotic scenes on the edges of the conference hall.

Rising tensions between protesters and police had escalated with clashes in Hamburg’s historic harbour area on Thursday night, and escalated further when masked anti-capitalist protesters torched cars and smashed shop windows in the Altona district on Friday morning.

Masked protesters in black clothes used flares to set fire to at least 20 cars and pelted rocks at the windows of banks and smaller shops as they made their way through Altona and along the Elbchaussee road along the river at about 7.30 am on Friday morning.

Many shops and cafes in the area, including a local Ikea, boarded up their windows in anticipation of further rioting.

Melania Trump, the wife of the US president, Donald Trump, was reportedly stopped from attending an event in the G20’s supporting programme by the protests. “Police have not given us security clearance to leave the guest house,” Trump’s spokesperson told German press agency dpa.
--Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/07/g20-protests-hamburg-altona-messehalle
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