Thousands rally over summit

Growth must be inclusive: Merkel

HAMBURG, July 2, (Agencies): Thousands of people rallied in Hamburg on Sunday to protest at next week’s G20 summit, where US President Donald Trump is make his maiden appearance at the forum of major economies.

A police spokesman put the turnout at the demonstration — the first of dozens scheduled in the runup to the summit on Friday and Saturday — at around 10,000, while the organisers said the figure was far higher.

The protest was “completely peaceful,” the police spokesman told AFP.

The gathering outside city hall took place in parallel with protests by canoeists on the nearby river Alster, while in the port of Hamburg, Greenpeace staged a climate demonstration near a ship laden with coal.

The Group of 20 (G20) comprises leaders of the world’s major industrialised and emerging economies.

Hamburg, where summit host Chancellor Angela Merkel was born, is a bustling city that is also an anti-establishment bastion.

Around 30 protests have been scheduled ahead of the summit, and the organisers are hoping for a total turnout of more than 100,000 people.

Hamburg is a citadel of leftwing radicals, and the authorities say they are bracing for possible clashes and property damage.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, in the Sunday edition of the daily Bild, warned that any violence “should be nipped in the bud”.

“Freedom of assembly is only valid for peaceful demonstrations,” he said.

Around 15,000 police will be deployed to protect the summit, in addition to 3,800 officers monitoring airport and train security.

Merkel said on Sunday leaders will have to focus on sustainable and inclusive economic growth rather than their own prosperity.

Distribution

In her weekly podcast, the German chancellor said this year’s G20 summit will delve into issues championed by protesters such as distribution of wealth and consumption of resources — alongside related issues like climate change, free markets, consumer protection and upholding social standards.

“It’s not only going to be about (economic) growth but rather sustainable growth,” Merkel said. “We’ve got to have a ‘win-win’ situation for everyone. The issues obviously revolve around: how do we achieve inclusive or sustainable growth?”

Merkel, seeking a fourth term in a Sept 24 election, outlined the issues as: “What are we doing with our resources? What are the rules for distribution of wealth? How many people are taking part? And how many countries are able to profit from that?”

Without mentioning the protests that have German security officials worried about possible acts of sabotage this week in the country’s second-largest city, Merkel noted that these non-traditional issues were forced onto the G20 agenda.

“If we simply try to carry on as we have in the past, the worldwide developments will definitely not be sustainable and inclusive,” she said. “We need the climate protection agreement, open markets and improved trade agreements in which consumer protection, social and environmental standards are upheld.”

Efforts

In a speech to parliament last week, Merkel promised to fight for free trade and press on with multilateral efforts to combat climate change at the summit, challenging the “America First” policies of US President Donald Trump.

The G20 meeting follows a G7 summit in Sicily a month ago that exposed deep divisions between other Western countries and Trump on climate change, trade and migration. Trump later announced he was pulling the United States out of a landmark agreement to combat climate change reached in 2015 in Paris.

German authorities are bracing for trouble in Hamburg, worried that the protests could turn violent as they did outside a G8 summit in Genoa, Italy in 2001 when one person was shot dead and hundreds injured.

The German Federal Crime Office warned that violent G20 opponents could carry out arson and sabotage at infrastructure targets such as the Hamburg harbour and airport, newspaper Welt am Sonntag said on Sunday.

Germany’s Parliament voted Friday to punish social media giants with fines of up to 50 million euros ($57 million) if they systematically fail to remove illegal hate speech.

Berlin took the measure, one of the toughest in the world, after a surge in racist and incendiary speech online, particularly since the arrival of around one million asylum-seekers since 2015.

Under German law, Holocaust denial, incitement of hatred, and racist and antiSemitic speech are illegal.

But critics warned that the prohibitive fines would stifle legitimate free speech by prompting online giants like Twitter and Facebook to excessively delete and censor posts as a precaution.

Power

They also said it would give social networks, rather than the authorities, the power to decide which content flouts the law.

But Justice Minister Heiko Maas argued that “freedom of opinion ends where criminal law begins”.

“Death threats and insults, incitement to hate or (Holocaust denial) are not part of freedom of expression — rather, they are attacks against other people’s freedom of opinion,” Maas said in a statement before the bill passed the lower house on the last day of the session.

“They are intended to intimidate and mute others,” he said.

Under the new law, companies like Twitter and Facebook would have 24 hours to remove posts that openly violate German law after they are flagged by users. Offensive content that is more difficult to categorise would have to be deleted within seven days after it is reported and reviewed.

The government emphasised that the heavy fines would be imposed only if companies systematically failed to follow the new directive, and not for individual cases. Social media companies pledged in 2015 to examine and remove within 24 hours any flagged hateful comments, but a government report in April tracking progress on this front found that not enough had been done.

“The online platforms are not taking adequate action. Our experience has clearly shown that without political pressure, the social networks will unfortunately not budge,” Maas said.

In the April report, Maas said Twitter took down just one percent of the content reported by users deemed to run afoul of Germany’s anti-hate speech laws, while Facebook deleted 39 percent.

Google’s YouTube video sharing platform fared far better, with a rate of 90 percent, according to a government study cited by the minister.