England's Daily Mirror Reporter Documents NY Police Brutality

NEW YORK SAYS NO Feb 17 2003


REST OF THE WORLD PROTESTS: Thousands brave cold.. and the cops

From Richard Wallace, US Editor In New York


ON the streets of New York I saw the kind of freedom George Bush has vowed to gift to Iraq - menacing squads of riot police.

In an attempt to sabotage this deafening chorus of disapproval, blue helmeted officers backed by horses confined pockets of protesters to Manhattan side streets.


At the corner of 24th Street and Sixth Avenue, 30 blocks from the rallying point, I watched incredulous as around 200 baton wielding police set about a group of 100, feverishly tearing down their banners.

The provocation? Not staying on the pavement. Saddam Hussein's goons would have been proud.

Then they kept them tightly penned in a car park entrance, enjoying the fear and confusion on their faces. One officer warned me: "Hey bud, if you know what's good for you, get the f*** away."

Four days earlier a judge had banned the march, citing "security" anxieties. Curiously there were no such concerns for the Thanksgiving Parade in November or next month's St Patrick's Day march. Funny that.

"First we couldn't have a march, then we're threatened for trying to get to the legal rally," said Max Thornburgh, 29, from New Jersey.

The office phone system of United for Peace and Justice, one of the main co-ordinating groups, packed up half an hour before the rally began. Funny that.

NYPD chiefs called a Level Four mobilisation - the highest since a plane crashed in Queens two years ago - with 5,000 officers on the streets.

But their crude attempts to intimidate were laughable. Their barely concealed rage as a tide of humanity flooded the island was palpable. Sneering and shouting unfunny insults at marchers, many had clearly taken sides.

First Avenue was the original rallying point but 10 minutes after the noon start time police chiefs gave the order to close First and Second Avenues to traffic. Tempers frayed as demonstrators wanting to join the rally, many having travelled hundreds of miles, were prevented for no good reason.

Officially only 50 were arrested but I saw dozens dragged off with as many as 400 handcuffed and locked in freezing buses.

None was charged. All were released in the early hours of yesterday. Another proud day for the First Amendment.

Eight officers were injured, one kicked in the head and another punched in the face. A police horse was punched in the face and dragged to the ground.

Police and rally organisers gave widely varying estimates of the number of demonstrators, with organisers putting it at more than 500,000 shrugging off sub-zero temperatures.

It was not just the usual suspects. Of course there were over-excited students, of course there were professional activists.

But most were the so-called silent majority - blue collar Joes, the middle classes, couples with baby carriages, fur clad Upper East Siders.

Arthur Buonomia said: "Middle America is getting off their sofas and their big screen TVs and trying to bring about changes to end this war."

Adele Welty, whose firefighter son was killed in the September 11 attacks, said: "Timothy was at the World Trade Center to save lives. I don't feel he would sanction innocent lives being shed in his name."

Charley Richardson, 50, of Boston, held a photo of his son Joe, a Marine in the Gulf, and a sign reading: "Don't send him to war for oil."

The Daily Mirror's "No War" and "Make Love Not War" front pages were much in evidence.

"Peace! Peace! Peace! Let America listen to the rest of the world - and the rest of the world is saying, 'Give the inspectors time'," Archishop Desmond Tutu told Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists who filled an ecumenical service.

Hundreds more rallies were held tacross the US.

In Colorado Springs 34 were arrested for failing to disperse. Police used pepper spray and teargas at them. After one man threw a teargas canister back they fired rubber bullets and used a stun gun.

In Canada about 100,000 marched in Montreal and 25,000 clogged the streets of Vancouver. In South Africa, 5,000 turned out in Capetown and 4,000 in Johannesburg.

Japan held more than 10 demos, the biggest in Tokyo attracting 5,000. In Damascus, Syria, 200,000 marched.

In Buenos Aires, Argentina, thousands rallied. Some 30,000 marched in Mexico City, at least 300,000 across France. And Berlin's rally drew 500,000.

More than 70,000 marched in Amsterdam, Holland, 60,000 in Oslo, Norway, 20,000 in Vienna, Austria, 50,000 in Brussels, Belgium, 35,000 in Stockholm, Sweden, 40,000 in Bern, Switzerland and 25,000 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

In eastern Europe 20,000 turned out in Budapest, Hungary, 10,000 in Zagreb, Croatia, and 1,200 in Prague, Czech Republic, hundreds in Bratislava, Slovakia, Bucharest, Romania, and Skopje, Macedonia, and 2,000 in Kiev, Ukraine. Belgrade, the Serbian capital bombed by Nato in 1999, held a silent protest.

In Mostar, Bosnia, 100 Muslims and Croats united for the first cross-community action in seven years.

ROME played host to the world's biggest march on Saturday.

Police estimated that two million people took to the streets butorganisers insisted the figure was closer to four million. Eighty trains were laid on to get people to the capital from 130 locations across Italy.

SYDNEY

MIRROR writer John Pilger addressed 500,000 anti-war protesters in Sydney.

But PM John Howard said: "I don't know you can measure public opinion by the number of people who turn up."

SPAIN

MILLIONS turned out for peace rallies in 55 cities and towns in the country's biggest ever demonstrations.

Barcelona was brought to a standstill by 1.3million protesters - 200,000 short of the city's entire population.

Film director Pedro Almodovar told crowds of up to a million in Madrid: "The only preventive war is peace."