Police, protesters clash at G20
Cars torched, roads blocked and at least 100 arrested as Hamburg police bring in help
HAMBURG, GERMANY— Protesters torched cars and blocked roads Friday as German authorities called in reinforcements to control running street battles while leaders of the world’s biggest economies held talks.
Rallying against global capitalism, protesters played a game of cat and mouse with riot police as they tried to shut down major streets and disrupt the first day of the Group of 20 summit.
One street blockade forced U.S. first lady Melania Trump to miss an event with the spouses of other world leaders. U.S. President Donald Trump was the target of many protests.
In some parts of Hamburg, smoke billowed from cars set ablaze. Armoured police vehicles fanned out across the city and helicopters patrolled overhead. At least 175 officers — and many protesters — were reported injured since clashes began late Thursday, and about100 protesters had been arrested, police said Friday evening.
Both numbers were expected to rise as tussles continued late into the evening.
Protesters persisted in their attempt to seize intersections and other public spaces after beginning the day by trying to penetrate a broad police cordon clearing traffic along routes linking the summit venue to the airport and hotels.
“The G20 says it stands for 80 per cent of the world, or the world economy,” said Jana Schneider, 26, a criminology student in Hamburg. “Well, not me.”
Hamburg police called in reinforcements from across the country to join 20,000 officers already deployed.
Forty-five water cannons were available to disperse crowds and a no-fly zone was in place over portions of the city.
Crowds were expected to receive a high-profile boost after New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said he would join a major rally planned for Saturday.
The result was an anguished debate, unfolding on the sidelines of the summit, about security and free expression, in a port city that, for a thousand years, has connected northern Europe to the far reaches of the globe.
Its trademark openness is being tested as protesters — who could number as many as100,000 by Saturday — turned the old merchant city into a site of a global contest over capitalism and environmental degradation, among other concerns.
Past summits have drawn similar demonstrations. But this year’s protest has targeted a triad of divisive figures: Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tay- yip Erdogan and Trump.
They are among the foreign leaders being hosted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a downtown conference centre and the lofty Elbphilharmonie concert hall, a crown jewel of the city, which is among the country’s most affluent and yet burdened by an unemployment rate higher than the national average.
“This week is about Angela Merkel’s austerity policy going global via G20,” said Jan van Aken, a member of the German Parliament from the far-left Die Linke party.
He accused the German government of seeking to suppress protests, saying its approach was autocratic and would “make Erdogan, Putin and Trump feel at home here.”
The government is sensitive to this point. Merkel appealed for calm, saying on Friday that she respected “peaceful demonstrations,” but considered violence “unacceptable.”
“The main issue is that the summit is again, after Brisbane, in a democracy,” said Wolfgang Schmidt, a Hamburg politician involved in summit planning. Summits in Turkey and China followed the 2014 meeting in Australia. “You want to make sure that protest and dissenting views are heard, but you also need to maintain security, and with 42 highly protected heads of state and finance and foreign ministers,
it’s a challenge.”