May Day protests sweep world cities

LONDON - May Day protest rallies swept cities around the world and hundreds were detained in demonstrations ranging from anti-capitalist protests against global trade to traditional demands for workers' rights.

German police fired teargas and water cannon at thousands of protesters in Berlin and Frankfurt after leftists pelted them with bottles and stones and set fire to street barricades and cars.

In London, hard-core demonstrators turned violent late in the evening, smashing windows of banks and department stores after a day of largely peaceful protests by several thousand people in the shopping district round Oxford Street.

The protests against economic globalization follow violent street action against the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999, and at summits in Prague last year and Quebec City last month.

Protesters complain that multinational corporations wield too much power over people's lives, even to the point of coercing democratically elected governments.

The protests began yesterday in Australia where demonstrators tried to shut down the Sydney and Melbourne stock exchanges.

Protesters blocked streets in financial districts and, joined by trade unionists, marched on state parliaments in Sydney and Melbourne. Dozens of people were detained.

In Russia, tens of thousands of people marched to demand better pay and more jobs. Some sought better workers' rights, others a return to the certainties of their communist past.

Russian news agencies quoted police as saying more than 300,000 people had attended some 480 marches without incident in the world's largest country stretching over 11 time zones.

In Oslo, protesters threw a cream pie in the face of Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorbjoern Jagland.

"Cream pie throwing has become an epidemic," the minister said, laughing off the attack during a May Day rally.

One of the pie-throwers said the attack was a protest at what they viewed as a drift to the right in Norwegian politics under the minority Labour Government.

Germany's worst violence took place in the financial capital of Frankfurt where police used teargas, water cannon and batons in clashes with several thousand left-wing activists protesting against a neo-Nazi march in the city.

Five police officers were injured in the Frankfurt clashes, while 55 protesters were detained and 31 arrested.

Berlin police arrested 150 people after being pelted by bottles and stones in what German television said was the worst May Day violence in the city in a decade.

Over 6,000 leftists and anarchists set fire to barricades overnight in two eastern Berlin suburbs.

Leftists also barricaded streets in the northern city of Hamburg, damaging cars and setting off fireworks. Police said one person was arrested and 31 were temporarily detained.

In Zurich, protesters threw stones, bottles and paint at police, who responded with water cannon, teargas and rubber shotgun pellets. A police spokesman said around 40 people had been detained.

Bottles flew and fireworks exploded in London's Oxford Street, prompting police to use batons against protesters who had chosen the area for their main protest.

Police said 31 people had so far been detained and 10 protesters taken away with "minor injuries."

In Britain, police had deployed in force across London to face a forecast 10,000 activists, vowing to prevent a re-run of the violence that erupted in the city a year ago.

More than 500 cyclists blocked morning London traffic and staged a brief, noisy protest outside the US embassy.

About 5,000 protesters then gathered in Oxford Street where they faced mounted riot policemen in pouring rain.

Unlike many European capitals where May Day is a public holiday, it is a normal working day in Britain.

In South Korea about 20,000 workers faced 15,000 riot police in Seoul to protest against government economic restructuring and a harsh police crackdown on car workers in April.

In Taiwan, thousands of unemployed workers and union activists marched through Taipei, demanding jobs and the resignation of top government officials.

Russia's news agency Interfax said more than 50,000 people took part in May Day rallies across Siberia and the Far East.

It said they were demanding higher wages, better working conditions, improved pensions, price controls and abolition of a single social tax introduced at the beginning of the year.

Marchers carried banners proclaiming "We need a second Stalin" and "No to the anti-national policy of the government."

Thousands of Iranian workers marched to the parliament to protest against high unemployment and to demand tougher action against illegal foreign laborers.

In Zimbabwe, thousands of workers gathered for a May Day rally seen as a test of the government's ability to win key labor votes ahead of presidential polls expected next year.

In Hong Kong, hundreds of workers staged protests against high unemployment.

In Greece, flights were curtailed and shipping and rail services disrupted when public transport workers joined in May Day protests against government plans for pension changes.

A scuffle broke out in the northern Italian city of Turin after a small group of activists backing center-right leader Silvio Berlusconi tried to join a leftist May Day rally.

Some 5,000 mostly elderly supporters of Bulgaria's main opposition Socialist Party marched in central Sofia to protest against poverty, rising crime and corruption.

- REUTERS