Protests set to grip Geneva ahead of G7 summit<\/a><\/p>\nThis time, the Geneva authorities had permitted a march around a lengthy loop on the north side of the city — well away from the city centre and its luxury boutiques.<\/p>\n
By Saturday, small shops, supermarkets and university buildings — some of them far from the protest route — had boarded up their facades.<\/p>\n
Despite the precautions however, some protesters caused extensive damage on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Most of the 20,000 or so demonstrators who according to police took part in the protests, were peaceful.<\/p>\n
Waving banners with messages like “No to the G7 and all imperialist alliances!” and “Abort the G7”, the protesters gathered in a park on the shores of Lake Geneva. They then made their way through a barricaded city that seemed to be bracing for an invasion, as helicopters hovered above.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Under a burning sun, they set off chanting slogans with a range of messages, supporting Palestinians, climate action, feminism and anti-capitalist activism.<\/p>\n
“I’m here because I’m not happy that this group of heads of state is meeting here to make decisions that affect all of us,” Michel, a 69-year-old Swiss retiree waving a Palestinian flag, told AFP.<\/p>\n
‘Eat the Rich’ <\/p>\n
But shortly after the march began, several groups of black-clad protesters broke barriers protecting affluent apartment buildings along the way and set cars alight.<\/p>\n
AFP journalists saw a Tesla car ablaze, tagged with the words: “Eat the Rich”, and a number of buildings around the United Nations’ European headquarters were damaged.<\/p>\n
Clashes with police followed, as protesters chanting “Down with the police state” threw bottles, pieces of cement ripped up from the sidewalks, and firecrackers, and were met with clouds of tear gas and water cannons.<\/p>\n
Several hours in and with clashes still ongoing, police said that around 600 so-called “Black Bloc” radical protesters had taken part.<\/p>\n
Due to conditions imposed by the French authorities, the No-G7 coalition abandoned plans for a counter-summit and demonstration Sunday in the French border town of Annemasse.<\/p>\n
Switzerland mobilised up to 4,000 troops to support police forces, while France has announced the deployment of nearly 16,000 police, gendarmes, troops, firefighters and border guards around Evian.<\/p>\n
(With newswires)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Protesters in Geneva threw stones and firecrackers at the police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7],"tags":[563,1001,42195,65,1344,272,309,1219,1106,74],"class_list":["post-84133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-geneva","tag-canada","tag-france","tag-g7","tag-geneva","tag-germany","tag-international","tag-italy","tag-japan","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116750974172375269","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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