Demonstrators opposed to loans for big business by Latin America's largest development bank battled with police in protests that overshadowed the start of the bank's annual meeting. More than 50 people were injured, four of them seriously.
The protests erupted as senior finance officials from 47 nations opened the event, with Bolivian President Evo Morales calling for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to forgive his nation's US$1.6 billion IDB debt as part of a relief package that would also help Guyana, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua.
Several hundred protesters -- armed with handguns, gasoline bombs, sticks and stones -- smashed plate glass windows and trashed the reception area of a major Brazilian utility that has received funding from the bank, said Tatiana Resende, a spokeswoman for the company, Companhia Energetica de Minas Gerais.
PHOTO: AP
The hour-long rampage against the bank's role in funding privatizations and financing infrastructure projects such as dams took place about 5km from the elegant government arts complex where the IDB was meeting, and there was no indication participants knew it was under way.
Police ousted the protesters from the building by firing rubber bullets, spraying tear gas and setting off stun grenades, protesters said. Then officers on horseback chased down the fleeing protesters.
Eight officers were injured in the clash, one of them seriously after he was hit in the head with a rock. He received 30 stitches to close the wound and was hospitalized in grave condition, police said. Four security guards were also treated for minor injuries, Resende said.
Joceli Andrioli, a spokeswoman for the Movement of Dam-Affected People, said 17 protesters were treated at hospitals and 20 others suffered lighter injuries. Three had serious injuries and nine more were detained, she said.
Protesters accused the officers of brutality, and the Landless Rural Workers' Movement said authorities committed human rights violations "that cannot be tolerated, and we hope at the very least that those responsible will be punished."
But police were defended by Aecio Neves, the governor of Minas Gerais, where Belo Horizonte is the state capital.
"When it descends into violence, it doesn't make sense," Neves said.
Andrioli said the utility was targeted because of its link to the bank, which she said "has prompted privatization of water and natural resources. This only increases poverty in Brazil and enriches bankers and multinational companies."
Local news media said two police officers and a photographer were hurt in a separate clash about a kilometer from the palace.
The IDB event lasts through today, and Morales and Honduras' newly elected President Manuel Zelaya lobbied for the bank to forgive as much as US$3.5 billion owed by the five nations before departing.
Morales said debt relief is key to attacking poverty among Bolivia's 8.5 million people.
"It's not acceptable that 67 percent of the people in my country are living in poverty, and that 45 percent are extremely poor, living on less than US$1 a day," Morales said.
Morales also said Bolivia is in the midst of a "democratic revolution without arms" that will transform multinational companies from owners into partners of the Bolivian state.
And he repeatedly insisted that centuries of "looting" Bolivia's natural resources has prolonged a deep divide between the nation's rich and poor.
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