DAVOS, Switzerland Switzerland was counting the cost on Sunday after anti-globalization activists ran riot in Zurich and other cities when police suppressed protests against the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The country was totting up damage to property and vehicles after hundreds of protesters, furious at being prevented from demonstrating in Davos against the annual get-together of the world's business and political elite, vented their anger by rampaging through Zurich and Berne.

About 100 protesters were detained in Zurich and three police officers injured during running battles on Saturday evening.

But Switzerland was also assessing damage to its reputation after grass-roots organizations and the media accused the state of over-reacting to the planned Davos demonstration with an unprecedented security crackdown.

Police were determined to prevent another explosion of the anti-globalization protests that have hit cities from Seattle to Prague and nice in the last two years.

They were also conscious of last year's forum, when 2,000 anti-free trade protesters, denouncing the gathering as "meeting of murderers", smashed car windscreens and broke shop windows at a McDonald's restaurant.

Rights Violated

"Extending the anti-combat zone to all of Switzerland and the strict ban on demonstrations are a massive infringement of the freedoms of movement and expression," it said.

The mass circulation Sonntagsblick's headline was more succinct. "Flipped Out: Police Act as If in a Dictatorship. Anarchists Go Crazy."

After a local ban was imposed on demonstrations, police stopped hundreds of protesters from even getting to Davos on Saturday. The few hundred who got through were turned back by police in riot gear and firing water cannon.

Demonstrators accuse the top decision-makers in Davos of meeting behind closed doors to plot the future of the world.

"They are responsible for the neo-Liberal politics that cause death, hunger and misery for many, many people... We are definitely against this future they want for us," said one demonstrator, David Boehner.

On their return to Zurich in the evening, frustrated activists staged a demonstration which, according to police, "escalated into destructive rage".

About 400 people, some masked, staged a protest march through the city. They dug up paving stones and hurled them at police. In several later clashes, demonstrators set fire to cars, smashed shop windows and set up barricades, police said. Several police cars were also damaged.

In Berne, about 100 people marched through the city center on Saturday afternoon. Some demonstrators threw bottles and stones at police, cars were damaged and two protesters were detained.

Police tactics in suppressing the demonstration in Davos drew strong criticism from some of the 36 grass-roots groups invited to take part in this year's forum.

But Swiss President Moritz Leuenberger and WEF founder Klaus Schwab defended the authorities' actions.

"The government does not hold the WEF. A private organization does this... We have to guarantee its being held anywhere, especially if there are threats to make the WEF disappear," Leuenberger told Sonntagszeitung.

Schwab said the Swiss government had done a formidable job. Noting that 5,000 demonstrators had been expected in Davos, he told Reuters: "They didn't overreact. They were just here with a massive presence in order to be able to handle a very large group of possible demonstrators."

(Reuter)