AFP on Latin American coverage of G-8

Sunday July 22, 8:52 AM

Latin America reports on violence at G8 summit,
martyrdom of protester

CARACAS, July 21 (AFP) -

Latin America offered its opinion Saturday on the Group of Eight summit underway in Genoa, Italy amid heavy protests from anti-globalization demonstrators, one of whom was shot dead a day earlier.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez called on "the world" to listen to the voices of protesters in Genoa. "We have to listen to these people," said Chavez, adding that people should be critical of police repression.

"This man's death aggravates the whole situation. We have to criticize the response because the response cannot be police and death."

Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso focused his attention on political outcomes to the G8 meeting relating to climate issues.

He reminded members of the Group of 77 developing nations to apply pressure, along with European Union countries, for G8 leaders to try and positively affect a successful outcome to the UN climate conference currently taking place in Bonn.

"The current impasse was aggravated by the US government's decision not to ratify the Kyoto protocol," a presidential statement said.

Blazoned across Brazil's Sao Paulo-based Globo newspaper was the headline "Globalization has a martyr."

"The anti-globalization movement born two years ago in Seattle involuntarily found itself a martyr yesterday in Genoa," the daily said.

Cuba's media, meanwhile, was flooded with the news of anti-globalization marches and the shooting death of Carlo Giuliani, 23, on the sidelines of the G-8 summit .

"The last combat in Genoa" was the red-letter, front-page headline of the official Communist daily Granma, which was plastered with photographs of demonstrations, arrests, and the shooting death of Giuliani.

Juventud Rebelde, Cuba's other nationally-circulating daily, carried 10 photographs of Giuliani's shooting.

Meanwhile, in Ecuador, the daily Hoy de Quito said that protests, despite their excesses, are calling for more balance between rich and poor nations.

"While there is still an international order in which multitudes are drowning in poverty and abject poverty, protests against globalization inspire more humane, fairer ethics as a basis for relations between nations," the paper said.

The common denominator among the anti-globalization demonstrators, it added, was "rejection for globalization's exclusive nature which serves to widen the enormous gaps that exist between rich and poor nations of the planet