Bush dogged by protests throughout European trip Swedish police use live ammunition on protesters

A man holds up a burning US flag during a protest by environmental and anti-globalization activists in downtown Gothenburg, Sweden, on Thurs., June 14, 2001 where President Bush and European leaders held their summit.

Compiled by Sean Marquis

June 20— Large crowds, some a few hundred strong, others numbering tens of thousands, voiced opposition to Bush and his policies in every European country he visited last week. Various police and military forces used everything from attack dogs to live ammunition to disperse crowds and crush dissent.

Bush didn’t find many friends inside closed doors either. During the European Union Summit in Sweden he had to fend off attacks on his lack of energy policy and rejection of the Kyoto climate treaty. Then traveling on to Slovenia, Bush had his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia is opposed to Bush’s Star Wars project and President Putin is worried about all the arms treaties that will be erased because of it, resulting in the threat of a new arms race.

Brussels, Belgium

About 400 protesters joined in front of NATO headquarters in Brussels to protest the visit and policies of President George W. Bush. Approximately 1,500 federal policemen were placed on duty. Police and soldiers in blue stood watch in armored personnel carriers and erected barbed-wire barricades around the fortress-like NATO facility on the outskirts of the Belgian capital. When Bush landed at the military airport, several Greenpeace activists formed a human chain at the exit gates, which delayed the escort to NATO headquarters.

Dan Hindsgaul, a spokesman for the Greenpeace demonstrators, said they wanted to make their opposition to the Bush policies heard. ‘’It’s a symbolic action showing he’s not welcome,’’ he said, adding that it was the first in a series of protests planned during Bush’s week long European trip. Hindsgaul said activists from across Europe hoped to pressure the European leaders not to allow the United States to use key radar facilities in Britain and Greenland for the missile defense project.

At NATO headquarters, people shouted, played music or just stood silently holding banners and signs. People protested against Star Wars, oil drilling in Alaska, Plan Columbia and for Women’s Rights.

When the crowd shouted “Bush go home!”, one US citizen turned around and shouted: “Please, don’t send him back home. We don’t want him either. Send him to hell !...”

While all the other heads of state such as French president Chirac, Great Britain’s prime minister Blair, Belgium’s premier Verhofstadt, and others drove through the front gates, Bush was driven in secretly through a back door. On Tuesday evening, a much larger crowd of almost 2,000 people held a protest vigil in front of the US Embassy in Brussels.

Warsaw, Poland

Around 200 demonstrators burned pro-US banners in Warsaw Friday to protest against President Bush’s visit to Poland.

Warsaw police had to separate anti-globalization and environmentalist campaigners from Bush’s supporters after the anti-American activists grabbed and burned a pro-Bush banner praising US plans for a missile defense shield.

Student protesters in Warsaw waved anti-US banners, with one reading “Bush into space, rockets into the trashcan” and another “Bush — a death sentence for the planet,” referring to his rejection of the Kyoto Treaty to cut global warming by reducing the emission of greenhouse gases.

Traffic was completely sealed off around the presidential palace on Friday morning where Bush was meeting his Polish counterpart Aleksander Kwasniewski, with regular police and riot troops surrounding the grounds, police dogs patrolling the site and sharpshooters positioned on nearby rooftops.

Anti-globalization protesters vowed to greet the US president with a cream pie in the face and blanketed the city center with “BUSH STOP” and “Bush Wanted” placards (see below).

Polish security agents held a training session earlier this week to practice protecting high-ranking officials from objects thrown by protesters, a favorite tactic of local activists who managed to hit former US president Bill Clinton with an egg during his visit last month.

Gothenburg, Sweden

Police in Sweden say more than 200 people have been arrested during anti-globalization, anti-European Union, and anti-US demonstrations during the European Union summit meeting with President Bush.

Negotiations to cut global warming went quickly back to square one as the conference opened and President Bush rejected European urgings to embrace the Kyoto protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

President Bush told EU delegates the Kyoto protocol to cut greenhouse gas emissions was too inflexible. Bush said the US was prepared to cooperate on global warming, but wanted to lead the way.

The EU was frustrated by the President’s refusal to back Kyoto, reminding him that America is the world’s biggest polluter, but it is anxious to avoid the issue, creating a rift at this two-day summit.

Europe’s leaders were forced to consider slowing down their “great debate” about the future of the continent in the face of growing evidence of “a widespread sense of disconnection” between the EU and its citizens.

As thousands of anti-globalization demonstrators took to the streets of Gothenburg, the 15 heads of government attending the Swedish summit were warned that ordinary people remain frustrated by their remoteness and lack of democratic accountability.

People carry a banner reading "Bush not Welcome"
through downtown Gothenburg, Sweden, on
Thursday, June 14, 2001.

Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister, told colleagues that Ireland’s shock rejection (voted down in a national referendum) of the Nice treaty, which paves the way for EU expansion up to 27 members. “There is frustration at what is seen as an absence of clarity, openness and responsiveness in how the union goes about his business,” Ahern said. “There is a real and urgent need to focus on how we make the union more meaningful to our citizens and on how its democratic accountability can be strengthened.” According to The Irish Times, “the entire project of the EU elite is to transform the EU from a Common Market which Ireland joined in the 1970s, without virtually any reference to the various peoples of the EU, into a super-state, a ‘world power’ as the President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, put it. They show, by refusing to have referendums in their own states, that their contempt is not restricted to the Irish people but extends to their own.”

Outside the summit venue police clashed with thousands of anti-capitalist activists. Police used horses and attack dogs to trample and maul demonstrators and beat into crowds with clubs and shields. Protesters threw sticks and cobble stones, erected burning barricades and smashed windows of banks and at least two McDonald’s restaurants.

At one point on Friday afternoon, a group of riot police became separated from a larger contingent and “fearing for their lives” opened fire with live ammunition. Three people were shot, one had several wounds to the abdomen and is still in critical condition.

Actions outside the Summit forced planners to cancel a dinner at a restaurant in the city center and stay instead in the heavily guarded conference center.

Sources: Austrailian Broadcasting Corporation; The Irish Times; The Guardian UK; Reuters; Agence France Presse; IMC Sweden

Americans in Colombia blamed for civilian massacre in 1998

By Karl Penhaul

Bogota, Colombia, June 15— Three American civilian airmen providing airborne security for a US oil company coordinated an anti-guerrilla raid in Colombia in 1998, marking targets and directing helicopter gunships that mistakenly killed 18 civilians, Colombian military pilots have alleged in a official inquiry.

The air attack on the village of Santo Domingo in oil-rich northeast Arauca province took place on Dec. 13 of that year amid efforts to hunt down a 200- strong column of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Survivors said the aircraft attacked them as they ran out of their homes to a nearby road with their hands in the air to show they were non-combatants.

The raid caused some of the worst “collateral damage” inflicted on civilians by the armed forces in the recent history of Colombia’s 37-year conflict. Shortly after the incident, President Andres Pastrana criticized the military’s actions, saying that security forces “cannot respond to barbarism with barbarism.”

The alleged role of the US airmen — emerging only now — has raised fresh questions about American involvement in a war that is increasingly being outsourced to private companies not accountable to the US Congress.

According to the State Department, about 300 US civilians are in Colombia, most of whom work on contracts ostensibly linked to anti-drug efforts, which Washington has funded with more than $1 billion as part of the Pastrana government’s “Plan Colombia.” Some have even piloted helicopters in raids on drug plantations and installations in southern Colombia.

The pilots in the Santo Domingo incident were providing security for Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp., which operates nearby Cano Limon, Colombia’s second largest oil field.

Investigators at the Colombian prosecutor general’s office have asked the US Embassy in Bogota to help obtain information from the American airmen involved in the attack, who worked for a private Rockledge, Fla.-based air surveillance contractor called AirScan International Inc.

Embassy officials issued a terse statement Wednesday saying that the airmen were not contract employees of the US government and that the embassy did not help oil companies solve their security issues.

Although it occurred two and a half years ago, the Santo Domingo attack is becoming a cause celebre for human rights organizations protesting creeping US involvement in Colombia’s guerrilla war.

They say the fact that US-donated helicopters dropped cluster bombs and rockets on Santo Domingo is a disturbing demonstration of how the Colombian military has sometimes used US aid that in theory is earmarked only for anti-narcotics operations.

“Here is an example of how US aid is involved in human rights abuses,” said Robin Kirk, senior researcher for the New York-based group Human Rights Watch.

“This is really the first test case of how the US government is going to abide by its own human rights laws,” Kirk said, referring to the so-called Leahy Law that restricts US aid from being spent on counterinsurgency operations.

Colombian Air Force pilot Cesar Romero told military judge Capt. Luz Monica Ostos in testimony last month about the Santo Domingo attack: “The coordination was done directly with the armored helicopters that were supporting us and with the (Cessna 337) Skymaster plane flown by US pilots. The Skymaster and gunship crews talked directly to the ground troops.”

While Romero conceded that the US-donated Vietnam-era Huey UH-1H helicopter he piloted bombed a target marked by the Cessna, he said he had no intention of causing civilian casualties.

If Romero and Jimenez are eventually accused of criminal action in the deaths of innocent civilians, they could face up to 30 years in jail. However, it is unlikely that the US airmen will face any charges, analysts say.

The raid came a day after army intelligence sources and the Skymaster plane detected rebel movements in the area.

Air force helicopters strafed Santo Domingo with machine-gun fire, air-to-surface rockets and cluster bombs. Eighteen civilians were killed, including nine children, but no guerrillas.

At the time, the Colombian armed forces and US officials conceded that the aircraft and almost all weaponry involved in the attack had been supplied under a 1989 US aid package that was exempt from current congressional restrictions.

An inquiry was launched immediately after the incident, but final results have been delayed by military and civilian courts arguing over jurisdiction.

In testimony to the military tribunal late last month, helicopter co-pilot Lt. Johan Jimenez backed Romero’s accounts of the role of the AirScan spotter plane.

“The Skymaster pilot chose the places for troop disembarkment, pinpointed vulnerable areas and pointed out guerrilla presence,” Jimenez said in an official transcript shown to The Chronicle.

“The (Colombian) Blackhawk (helicopter) and Skymaster pilots are the ones that helped the pilot of our Huey UH-1H to identify the target with visual aid from the ground,” added Jimenez.

The Colombian pilots said the Skymaster — equipped with infra-red sensors and high-resolution cameras — was contracted by Occidental. Since 1997, the plane has constantly patrolled over the 120,000 barrel-a-day Cano Limon oil field and along the length of the 500-mile pipeline that pumps crude to the Caribbean coast.

Oil infrastructure is regularly sabotaged by the FARC and the small National Liberation Army (ELN), which accuse multinationals of plundering the country’s natural resources.

Juan Carlos Ucros, Occidental’s legal representative in Bogota, said the company had “no contractual links with the pilots or the plane” at the time of the attack.

But a senior official for the Colombian state oil company Ecopetrol, which has a stake in the Cano Limon field, said yesterday that Occidental had always funded the Skymaster plane but had switched from paying AirScan directly to channeling payments through the Colombian Defense Ministry.

“I have confirmed that the plane is paid for by Occidental although the contract has been held at various stages by either the Occidental-Ecopetrol partnership or by the Defense Ministry,” said the official, who requested anonymity.

AirScan director John Manser, speaking from company headquarters, said the Skymaster plane and crew were originally contracted to Occidental and Ecopetrol in 1997. The company then trained Colombian crews and eventually leased and later sold the spotter plane to the Colombian air force.

Manser confirmed that the three US airmen named in the Colombian investigation — Joe Orta, Charlie Denny and Dan MacClintock — had worked for AirScan in Colombia but had since left the company. He declined to say whether the men, like most of the company’s employees, were former US servicemen.

Air Force chief Gen. Hector Fabio Velasco has declined to comment about the allegations, but told reporters briefly that there may have been US “trainers” aboard the spotter plane piloted by Colombians.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Citizens discuss “Reclaim the Streets” march

By Nicholas Holt

Asheville, June 19— Citizens gathered today at Pack Library’s Lord Auditorium to discuss the May 21 “Reclaim the Streets” action at which 11 people were arrested. On that day, the Asheville Police Department made arrests at the march downtown. Later that evening participants gathered at the county jail in a show of solidarity with those being held there. Additional arrests were then made by the Sheriff’s Department. In the course of the evening a marcher, Kevin Dunn, 20, was injured when he dropped a backpack containing a handgun that misfired. At the community meeting participants agreed on categories of discussion and began voicing opinions and observations. Among the almost 70 people who gathered at the forum were participants in the march, witnesses, and other interested community members.

There was much concern expressed about the behavior of law enforcement officers, both during the action and after. Participants discussed different methods and degrees of success in communicating with police. “There is no mechanism for police-community relations,” in Asheville, one speaker complained, and expressed his desire for a civilian review board. Others drew attention to the absence of police representatives at the public forum.

The historic roots of police activity in relation to capitalism and state power were noted.

One individual described a recurring heightened police presence at the Riverside Drive cooperative performance space since the arrests.

Others expressed concern at what they considered poor planning on the part of march organizers. One speaker, who described herself as a supporter of “Reclaim the Streets” actions, said she refrained from participation because she felt over-reaction on the part of police was inevitable.

“It’s unrealistic to take streets in Asheville and not expect police response,” said another woman who stated she was frustrated at the lack of prearranged legal support for those arrested.

The presence of the gun that wounded Kevin Dunn was a source of distress for several speakers. Comments were made that guns “run contrary to the spirit” of the “Reclaim the Streets” movement and threaten the trust necessary for cooperative action. There was also concern that media portrayals of the incident would discourage future participation in activism. One woman felt there had not been a sufficiently high response within the activist community regarding the shooting.

The origins of the weapon remain unknown.

Discussion regarding free speech and media activism followed, as well as warnings about political profiling practiced by Asheville law enforcement.

Among those present was mayoral candidate Mickey Mahaffey, who advised clarity in purpose during direct action and more citizen participation in government.

Plans were made for future public forums.