A Stormy History of Anti-Globalization Protests
With the surprisingly violent clashes at last month's European Union summit in Gothenburg, Sweden, still fresh in the memory, the Italians are aware that they could be faced with a new chapter in a long series of increasingly well-supported demonstrations against world capitalism.
A parcel bomb which seriously injured a policeman in Genoa on Monday and the timely discovery of an incendiary device have already added to the fears of violence during the three-day summit which opens Friday.
The following is a list some key moments in the history of anti-globalization protests:
1999 Dec 3: SEATTLE, Washington - Some 40,000 demonstrators from all over the world demonstrate at World Trade Organization talks aimed at introducing a "millennial round" of trade talks. The summit is called off and a curfew imposed in the city.
2000 Jan 29: DAVOS, Switzerland - The annual World Economic Forum, a high-level talking shop, is disrupted by more than 1,000 protestors who break through a police cordon to get into the town.
Feb 12-19: BANGKOK - The first major peasants' demonstration in Asia at the UN Conference on Trade and Development. 120 NGOs draw up a "Bangkok appeal" against "global governance" as 7,000 riot police are deployed to contain the protests.
April 16: WASHINGTON - 15,000 demonstrators turn out to protest at the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank and form human chains, cordoning off the two bodies' headquarters.
May 1: LONDON - Radicals turn out for a mass May Day rally against globalization, paralyzing the city center.
June 25: GENEVA - Mass military and police presence prevents serious troubles during a march on the eve of a United Nations special social summit.
June 30: MILLAU, France - A mass protest, which passes off peacefully for the most part, marks the trial of Jose Bove, the militant French farmers' leader seen as a symbol of the struggle against unbridled market forces, charged with ransacking a McDonald's fast-food restaurant.
Sept 11-12: MELBOURNE, Australia - Police and 10,000 anti-globalization demonstrators, including trotskyists, anarchists, students, gay rights activists, environmentalists and even schoolchildren, clash in the violent siege of a World Economic Forum summit.
Sept 26: PRAGUE - Violent anti-IMF and World Bank protests see 11,000 anarchists and other extremists Hurl Molotov cocktails at police, who reply with tear gas and water cannon in the worst unrest in Prague since 1969, when residents and police clashed following the Soviet invasion of 1968. More than 400 demonstrators are arrested.
Dec 6-7: NICE, France - An estimated 50,000 people, trade unionists, anti-capitalists and anarchists, converge on the European Union summit. Clashes with riot police leave 24 policemen injured and 42 demonstrators under arrest.
2001 Jan 27: ZURICH, Switzerland - Police foil plans for a repeat demonstration in Davos by arresting more than 120 demonstrators before the forum and expelling 30 from Swiss territory. Clashes see police fire tear gas grenades and rubber bullets to disperse the strong-throwing crowd who set fire to several cars.
At the same time, up to 10,000 other anti-globalization supporters protested thousands of miles away in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil, among them such luminaries as former South African President Nelson Mandela and Nobel Literature Laureate Jose Saramago.
April 22: QUEBEC, Canada - Some 400 militant protestors are arrested while demonstrating at the Americas summit against the creation of an American Free Trade Zone. 19 police are injured.
June 15-16: GOTHENBURG, Sweden - Thousands of protestors rampage outside a European Union summit in the worst rioting ever to hit a meeting of the bloc. Three people are wounded by police bullets, one critically, and several hundred protestors detained during the violence, which forces organizers to relocate a working dinner of EU leaders and to move several delegations from their hotel.