GERMANY: 30,000 confront Rumsfeld

BY NORMAN BREWER

More than 30,000 people mobilised on February 8 outside NATO security conference attended by US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and European defence and security officials. More than 3500 police closed large sections of downtown Munich for two anti-war protests.

As snow fell, demonstrators opposed to war with Iraq carried placards such as "Rummy, go home" and "Welcome to Cuba" (a reference to a Rumsfeld's remark that equated Germany with Cuba and Libya because of Berlin's unwillingness to back a US-led war on Iraq).

More than 20,000 demonstrators joined a peace "parade" endorsed by Munich mayor Christian Ude. Ude's action is in stark contrast to his decision to ban demonstrations outside last year's security meeting. Ude described this official mobilisation as an expression of the "German way of peace" and counterposed it to the "naive anti-war fundamentalism" of the other anti-war protest later the same day.

Nevertheless, many participants from the first action joined the second 10,000-strong protest — organised by more radical sections of the movement — at Munich's well-known Marienplatz square.

On February 7, police raided a youth centre where anti-war activists were preparing for the demonstrations, arresting one person and detaining 22 others until the end of the conference on February 9.

From Green Left Weekly, February 19, 2003.

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From GLW issue 526