Sydney trade protesters regroup to test police cordon - reporter trampled, hospitalized

Sydney trade protesters regroup to test police cordon

15.11.2002
By GREG ANSLEY Australia correspondent
SYDNEY - Senior ministers from the world's most powerful trading nations will come under siege today following protests that yesterday brought the centre of Sydney to a standstill and saw 13 demonstrators arrested.
A journalist was knocked to the ground and trampled by a police horse during one clash between police and demonstrators.
Although organisers of the protest against the informal meeting of 25 World Trade Organisation trade ministers said the demonstration would be peaceful, more militant groups hope today to break through the tight security encircling Olympic Park at Homebush.
"It is heavily guarded, but this is not a police state and it is not impenetrable," one said.
Anger at globalisation has been inflamed by yesterday's announcement that Australia and the United States will begin negotiating a free-trade agreement, and continuing fears that Washington will attack Iraq.
"We say 'John Howard, stop, stand back and do a proper independent analysis of what an agreement means to jobs in this country'," said Manufacturing Workers Union secretary Doug Cameron. "Stop it now."
About 1000 demonstrators - including dozens of secondary schoolchildren recruited by anti-war protesters through schoolyard campaigns and the internet - defied police bans to march through the centre of Sydney.
Although their numbers were far fewer than earlier predictions of up to 10,000, the demonstrators broke into separate groups to divide a huge police presence mobilised against any possible threat to officials from New Zealand, the US, Europe, Japan, Canada, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Using powers introduced for the Sydney Olympics, police refused permits for protest marches and clamped an extraordinary security cordon around Olympic Park, erecting kilometres of fencing and blocking road and rail access.
Officials said they were taking no chances in the wake of September 11, the Bali bombings and reported threats against Australia that on Wednesday gained new credibility in a tape apparently recorded by Osama bin Laden.
In the city hundreds of police, some carrying fire extinguishers, initially did little more than escort marchers as they divided and headed for targets including the US Consulate, the Stock Exchange, Prime Minister John Howard's office, the Defence recruiting centre and McDonald's.
Beating drums, chanting slogans and waving banners, demonstrators represented causes ranging from anti-globalisation and anti-war to socialism, churches, the environment and animal liberation.
Trouble erupted first when a demonstrator climbed on top of a Government bus to take photographs and was arrested.
As angry protesters closed in on police and scuffles broke out, mounted officers rode in to break up the crush, knocking down Patricia Karvelas, a reporter with the Australian newspaper. Paramedics treated her for abdominal injuries and a head wound before taking her to hospital with a suspected fractured pelvis.
NSW Police Minister Michael Costa said the incident would be investigated.
Police charged three women with offensive behaviour after they stripped and lay naked on US flags, and 10 men were arrested but not charged after other scuffles.