BERLIN/PARIS, 30 March 2003 — Peace activists took to the streets of major cities across Europe yesterday in protest at the war in Iraq a day after anti-war demonstrators organized similar marches across the Arab world, amid mounting public fears the US-British forces could become embroiled in a bloody and prolonged conflict. In Berlin, 50,000 people turned out, police reported. In Osnabruck and Munster, around 40,000 protesters formed a 50-kilometer-long human chain stretching between the town halls of both German cities.
Thousands of French protesters turned out in Paris for the third such demonstration since the war began. Police reports put attendance figures at 18,000 while the organizers said up to 60,000 took part. Protesters gathered near the US Embassy before marching through the city chanting “no to war against Iraq, justice and peace in the Middle East”.
Between 5,000 and 10,000 marched in Marseilles and 5,000 were reported in Lyon. Around 7,000 protested in Athens, gathering in front of the US Embassy with chants of “stop the war”.
In Warsaw, over 3,000 people gathered in the city center before marching to the US Embassy. Clashes with police were reported after some demonstrators threw eggs and fireworks at the embassy building. Protesters called Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller and President Aleksander Kwasniewski puppets of Bush and chanted “That is our world, we will not let you destroy it”.
Meanwhile, in Yemen hundreds of women staged a sit-in at a main square in the capital Sanaa to protest the killing of Iraqi civilians. Around 500 women gathered at the At-Tahrir Square carrying photographs of slain and injured Iraqis, and banners denouncing the war. Tens of Yemeni journalists staged their own protest, sitting-in at their union headquarters.
Thousands of demonstrators marched on the US Consulate in South Africa’s Cape Town, burning US flags and chanting anti-American slogans. The protesters, estimated by SAPA news agency to number more than 10,000, demanded the expulsion of the US and British ambassadors in South Africa.
In Bangladesh, police said some 5,000 members of the Islamic group Shashantantro Andolon staged a peaceful protest and tried to march on the guarded diplomatic areas in the capital Dhaka. On Friday, Bangladesh, the world’s third largest Muslim-majority country, saw 10,000 people turn out in Dhaka to demand an end to the invasion of Iraq, torching a large number of effigies of US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Malaysian police used tear gas to break up an unauthorized protest yesterday while Bangladesh authorities rolled out barbed wire to keep marchers from the US Embassy, in another day of public opposition to war in Iraq. Around 15,000 people marched through Melbourne, Australia, to protest against the war and the participation of Australian troops.
In mostly Muslim Malaysia, a 5,000-strong rally, organized by activists from Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s party, passed off peacefully in Kuala Lumpur. But a rival protest drawn mainly from the ranks of the conservative Muslim opposition was dispersed by police.
Led by members of opposition political parties, Melbourne protesters ripped up an American flag and accused Australian Prime Minister John Howard of betraying the rule of law by backing the war, local media reported. “John Howard is becoming a global vigilante, contemptuous of the rule of law and contemptuous of the United Nations,” opposition Labor lawmaker Lindsay Tanner told the rally.
Hundreds of South Koreans opposed to the US-led war against Iraq and South Korea’s dispatch of troops there marched through city streets and scuffled with riot police in Seoul yesterday, witnesses said. The protesters burned a US flag laid upon a model of South Korea’s National Assembly building and waved portraits of Bush marked with the symbols of Nazis.
