Rostock, Germany - Protest leaders claimed victory Friday at
the Heiligendamm G8 summit in Germany, saying thousands of
demonstrators had achieved their aim of cutting off all land routes
to the beachside event.
At the waterside in the nearby port city of Rostock, 4,000 of the
protesters attended a final rally.
With room for 10,000, organizers delayed the event for two hours
in the vain hope that thousands more who had chanted anti-G8 slogans
at the Heiligendamm fence would attend.
Riot police were drawn up nearby to prevent a re-run of the
violence that caused minor injuries to 1,000 people at a similar
event on the same spot on June 2.
When the rally ended, they blocked a group of 500 who had planned
to march to a temporary detention centre where violent demonstrators
picked up during the week were being held.
'We managed to cripple road access to the summit the whole time,'
Lea Voigt, the spokeswoman for the anti-summit group Block G8, told
reporters. 'Police had to turn to Plan B and supply Heiligendamm via
water and the air.'
Police have not shared Voigt's view during the week, stressing
that their main aim was to block violent protest while leaving the
non-violent ones in peace.
Among the memorable images of live TV coverage during the week was
of a police commander yelling rebuke at some of his own men who had
lost their tempers and flailed with their plastic clubs at
demonstrators.
German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble Friday voiced
'heartfelt thanks' to 17,000 police who had worked 'to the limits of
endurance' to ensure the summit was safe and calm.
Voigt said up to 13,000 people had protested at the Heiligendamm
fence. Protest-movement lawyers said police had put 1,200
demonstrators, including 500 taking part in sit-downs, in preventive
detention during the week.
Werner Raetz of another protest coalition, Demo AG, conceded that
the June 2 rioting had given a 'nasty image' to the protests, but
claimed the protests 'changed the political world.'
Earlier Friday, police helicopters forced a hot-air balloon to
land when it attempted to invade the aerial exclusion zone at the
summit on Germany's Baltic coast.
The environmentalist group Greenpeace mounted the flight, hanging
a yellow banner underneath the blue-and-white balloon's gondola
saying 'G8 act now,' overstamped with the word 'failed.'
Three police helicopters approached the balloon, creating strong
air turbulence which forced the balloon and its two occupants to
land, a Greenpeace spokeswoman said.
Farmers in the area demanded Friday compensation from the
government for trampled crops.
Mecklenburg West-Pomerania farmers' union president Rainer
Tietboehl said the police were responsible, since they had shoved
demonstrators into the fields while clearing roads.
State officials said no decision had been taken yet on the demand,
but in principle the protesters should pay, since they trespassed on
the farmland on the first day of the protests.
Voigt said Block G8 had spoken with the farmers, but believed
Berlin should pay for the ruined wheat and rapeseed:
'By inviting the G8 to meet, they also invited the resistance to
come,' she said.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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