Activists scuffled with police in London and decried the wealthy in Hong Kong yesterday as an unprecedented outcry against corporate greed and government cutbacks spread worldwide.
Inspired by the US’ “Occupy Wall Street” and Spain’s “Indignants,” people took to the streets in a rolling action targeting 951 cities in 82 countries from Asia to Europe, Africa and the Americas.
It was the biggest show of power yet by a movement born on May 15 when a rally in Madrid’s central Puerta del Sol square sparked a protest that spread internationally.
Photo: EPA
Anger over unemployment and opposition to the financial elite hung over the protests, which coincided with a Paris meeting of G20 financial powers pre-occupied by the eurozone debt crisis.
However, the demands and the sense of urgency among the activists varied depending on the city.
Scuffles broke out in London where about 300 people rallied in the financial district by Saint Paul’s Cathedral, raising banners saying: “Strike back!”; “No cuts!” and “Goldman Sachs is the work of the devil!”
Three lines of police, and one line at the rear on horseback, blocked them from heading to the London Stock Exchange and pushed back against lead marchers, some wearing masks.
“I am here today mainly as a sense of solidarity with the movements that are going on around the world,” said Ben Walker, a 33-year-old teacher from the eastern English city of Norwich. “We’re hoping for a kind of justice in the global financial system.”
He carried a sleeping bag and said he would spend the next night or two in the area.
In Madrid, 100 people in one of a series of five marches set off for an evening rally in the emblematic Cibeles square from where they were to proceed to Puerta del Sol for all-night rallies.
“The fight goes on!” they chanted at the start of a six-hour march from the southern suburb of Leganes to the center of Madrid.
Thousands more marched in Rome where 1,500 police were on patrol and famous monuments, including the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, were closed down and four metro stations were shut.
“Today is only the beginning. We hope to move forward with a global movement,” said one protester, Andrea Muraro, a 24-year-old engineering student from northern Padua.
A small group of about 50 protesters gathered outside of Africa’s biggest bourse, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, to voice concern over the country’s widening gap between rich and poor.
As the day began, about 500 people gathered in the heart of Hong Kong’s financial district to vent their anger at the inequities and excesses of free-market capitalism, while 100 demonstrators in Tokyo also voiced fury at accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant.
About 600 demonstrators in Sydney set up camp outside Australia’s central bank, where the plight of refugees and Aboriginal Australians was added to the financial concerns.
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