Burned police cars, wide no-protest zone presage G-20 summit

President Donald Trump was met with thousands of protesters when he arrived at meetings in Brussels in May. But with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan joining him at the Group of 20 meetings in Germany this week, Trump is unlikely to be the only target for demonstrators.

Add India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping and other leaders whose policies have sparked unrest to the cauldron that is Hamburg – the summit venue is a short walk from a notorious hotbed of left-wing protest – and the brew could prove explosive.

“G-20: Welcome to Hell” is the slogan anti-globalization activists have registered for their protests on July 6, when Trump and other leaders arrive for the July 7-8 summit in the northern port city.

“We are calling on the world to make Hamburg a focal point of the resistance against the old and new capitalist authorities,” said the organizers, who have ties to the Rote Flora squat, a centre for radical leftists where police have clashed frequently with protesters.

The site is about a kilometre from where the leaders will be meeting.

In the weeks leading up to the summit, police cars have been burned and train lines have been sabotaged. Authorities in Hamburg and the nearby city of Rostock have confiscated improvised weapons such as fire-extinguishers filled with flammable liquid, baseball bats and other items in several raids.

“We have to assume that this is only a tiny percentage of what is still in basements and garages in and around Hamburg,” Hamburg police criminal director Jan Hieber told reporters.

The “Welcome to Hell” demonstration is just one of dozens of protests that have been registered under a smorgasbord of themes with more than 100,000 demonstrators from across Europe and beyond expected to take part.

Officials estimate that some 8,000 protesters from Europe’s violent left-wing scene to be on hand and have been tracking known activists coming in from Scandinavia, Switzerland, Italy and elsewhere, Hamburg police chief Ralf Martin Meyer said.

In a preview of things likely to come, police clashed in Hamburg with hundreds of protesters Tuesday night, using pepper spray and water cannons to eventually bring the crowd under control.