Tens of thousands of left-wing demonstrators joined May Day marches across Europe and beyond today, their numbers boosted by the worst global recession in decades and a sunny spring day.
German protesters clashed with police from the early morning and labour day demos swiftly turned violent in Turkey and Greece.
In France, tens of thousands turned out across the country in a fresh show of force against President Sarkozy’s handling of the economic crisis, six weeks after as many as three million took to the streets.
About 2,000 demonstrators gathered by a statue of Karl Marx in Moscow waving banners and red Soviet flags and calling for a return of communism. In St Petersburg, Russia's second city and birthplace of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, police arrested about 100 members of far-right groups planning a counter-demonstration
In Istanbul, demonstrators were allowed into the central Taksim square for the first time since a May Day rally in 1977 when rightwing snipers killed 34 people. The landmark return was soon marred by violence as protesters hurled rocks and petrol bombs at police and smashed the windows of banks and boutiques in the centre of Turkey’s biggest city.
More than 6,000 people marched peacefully through central Athens, but a small group of anarchist protesters clashed with police elsewhere in the city. Police fired tear gas against the demonstrators, who burnt at least one car.
In Germany, on course for its biggest slump since the Second World War, Berlin police made 49 arrests as young demonstrators hurled bottles and rocks and set fire to cars and rubbish bins in the early hours.
Thousands of police were on duty, braced for the kind of pitched battles that have been a feature of German May Day protests for at least two decades.
In France, trade unionists predicted the biggest May Day turnout in decades as marchers paraded in Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux and elsewhere.
“Work, not death,” said a banner in Grenoble carried by workers from the German car parts maker Schaeffler, which is soon to close a plant in the area, as they marched behind colleagues carrying a coffin.
In Spain, where the government expects nearly one in five workers to be out of a job next year, large crowds of demonstrators gathered in central Madrid, and in Austria, a large crowed gathered in front of Vienna city hall.
In Tokyo, some 36,000 people rallied in Yoyogi park, demanding more welfare benefits and others protesting military spending, with many more youths and people in their 20s joining the event than in recent years.
In South Korea, some 8,000 workers and students rallied in a Seoul park urging an end to lay-offs and wage cuts caused by the crisis. There were also rallies in Manila, the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh and Taipei.
Source:The times
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