Tens of Thousands Around World Rally for Peace
Sat March 29, 2003 03:59 PM ET <a href=asia.reuters.com>By Greg Frost
BOSTON (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Boston to protest the war in Iraq, the latest in a wave of peace demonstrations that circled the globe on Saturday.
In what officials and historians said was the biggest protest in Boston in at least 30 years, thousands chanted "This is what democracy looks like" as they paraded through the elegant streets of America's education capital.
The diverse crowd included not just students and faculty from New England college campuses but families and retired people -- many of whom said the U.S.-led war had triggered a political awakening in their souls.
"This war spoke to me as being wrong, unjust, immoral and certainly not what American values are all about," said Susan Hughes, a former member of President Bush's Republican Party who lives in Groton, Massachusetts.
"Bush started this war to depose a dictator, but now we have an administration that is acting like the dictatorship we are trying to take out," the 46-year-old said as she prepared to march through Boston.
In New York, a few hundred protesters, primarily pro-Palestinian and also opposed to the Iraq war, marched down Broadway from Times Square to Union Square in downtown Manhattan. Demonstrators waved large Palestinian flags and chanted for an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian areas and against the war.
Last week, an estimated 150,000 to 250,000 people protesting the war marched along same route.
Earlier, tens of thousands rallied in France, Italy, Germany, and in the cities of Moscow and Budapest, to call for an end to the U.S.-led invasion launched to rid Iraq of its alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Demonstrations in Europe followed similar anti-war protests in Asia and Africa, home to some of the world's biggest Muslim populations. Malaysian police used tear gas to break up an unauthorized protest, while authorities in Bangladesh rolled out barbed wire to keep marchers from the U.S. embassy.
More than 10,000 people marched on the U.S. consulate in Cape Town, South Africa.
In a rare move, Chinese police allowed 100 demonstrators to rally in a walled park in eastern Beijing on Sunday.
BRIDGES DRAPED IN BLACK
In Rome, small groups of protesters hung black sheets from the sides of 16 bridges spanning the River Tiber, some of them crossed by invaders and victors in past centuries.
In a symbolic gesture, around 30,000 people in Germany formed a human chain between the northern cities of Munster and Osnabrueck, a 35-mile route taken in 1648 by negotiators who ended Europe's Thirty Years War.
Police said more than 23,000 people took part in two separate marches in the German capital, culminating at the country's "Victory Column" in the Tiergarten park. A giant globe-shaped map of the world emblazoned with the slogan "No War" marked out the destination.
Police arrested 25 people who tried to block a highway leading to the U.S. Rhein Main air base in Frankfurt during a protest by more than 1,000 people. Some 4,000 others formed a chain around the U.S. European Command headquarters in Stuttgart.
Hundreds of protesters, some carrying Iraqi flags and posters of Saddam Hussein, gathered in Caracas, Venezuela, and chanted slogans against President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"This is an illegal war, it has no justification," said 18-year-old Muslem Fuad, a Venezuelan student of Syrian origin.
Bangladeshi protesters, mostly from the radical Islamic Constitution Movement, burned American flags and effigies of Bush.
Demonstrators called for Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to be tried as war criminals.
In 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.
Hundreds of Russian protesters gathered in front of the U.S. embassy in Moscow, waving red banners and calling on the Kremlin to form an international coalition to oppose the U.S.-led strikes and to help Iraq.
Thousands marched through Paris in the city's fifth protest since the war began, but organizers this time stepped up efforts to avert anti-Semitic violence after two Jewish youths were beaten up at a similar march last week.