Global chorus for peace

By SCOTT MacLEOD and REUTERS

As clouds of war roll towards the borders of impoverished Afghanistan, a growing number of protesters, including New Zealanders, are calling for peace.

Nearly 300 gathered at Queen Elizabeth Square in Auckland on Saturday, urging the United States to seek justice rather than retribution for the suicide attacks that killed nearly 6500 people.

Their calls were echoed around the world. The largest protest was in the United States, where an estimated 10,000 demonstrators assembled peacefully only blocks from the White House.

New Zealand protesters marched up Queen St - businessmen from the right, Marxists from the left, and mothers from middle New Zealand united in their chant for "no racist war".

Many said US bombs would merely kill the poor and the sick, some said that economic sanctions should be used instead of war, and others said that killing was just plain wrong.

A few called for Americans to step back and ask themselves why their nation was so hated.

One who said that was Colin Parker, who handed out copies of socialist newspaper The Militant. He believed that the US was paying for its support of Israel, and that most Americans had no idea of the effects of US policy in the Middle East.

But for 21-year-old student Josh Mandel, there was also a question of proof. The US had yet to show that Osama bin Laden was behind the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Two members of the Waiheke Peace Group had more moralistic views on the move to war. Margaret Mills said terrorism had to be fought in some way, but not with bombs.

Maynie Thompson, aged 82, said: "It's very much an ethical thing and a philosophical thing. They're saying the only way to deal with violence is more violence - and we're saying we've got to put an end to it."

Emir Hodzic, a 23-year-old student from Bosnia, believed US strikes would spark a growing backlash.



"There's nothing to blow up there," he said. "I've been through war and injustice, and I think thousands of people are going to die just so the United States can make a point."

There were also the conspiracy theorists, saying the war was a US ploy to encircle the former Soviet Union, or that it was another battle for oil.

Around the world, groups held marches calling on the US not to launch a large-scale military attack on Afghanistan, which it accuses of harbouring bin Laden, the man US authorities say masterminded the attacks.

Chanting "war is not the answer", 10,000 demonstrators assembled blocks from the White House.

"War is not the answer because the events on September 11 were not the first battle in the war," said Brian Becker, one of the protest organisers.

"This has been an escalating cycle of violence.

"The US has tens of thousands of troops in the Middle East. They occupy Saudi Arabia, they bomb Iraq every week, they impose economic sanctions in Iraq so dreadfully that the [United Nations] say 1.5 million Iraqi people have died."

James Creedon, a rescue worker in New York City, left the rubble of Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center once stood, to join the medical teams at the protests.

"Many people at Ground Zero want international justice, but we don't want to see a hundred or a thousand more World Trade Centers in this country or abroad."

Although recent polls showed an overwhelming majority of the American people support some form of military action, Mr Becker said the protesters represented a broad spectrum of the US population.

Protesters also demonstrated against the hundreds of attacks on Arab Americans and Muslims since September 11.

Between the demonstrators' chants and drum beats rose some voices of support for the Bush Administration and a forceful response to the attacks.

"This isn't about racism, this is about exacting justice for 6500 Americans and people from more than 70 countries around the world who were murdered, murdered, mass-murdered," said Carter Wood, a Government employee who called the demonstrators "the hard-core anti-American left".

In Sydney, several thousand people marched through the central city carrying banners saying "Stop This Racist War" and "No Nukes in Space" and "Money for Jobs Not War".

At the Town Hall, New South Wales Greens MP Ian Cohen told the crowd that the terrorist attacks were barbaric but Australians should treat the US declaration of war on terrorism cautiously and intelligently.

"A tiny per cent of the money spent on mobilising troops and sending massive ships of war around the planet could resolve these problems through aid and food and education."

In Malaysia, a few dozen students and rights activists sang songs and chanted peace slogans in an area they taped off as a "torture-free zone" at the foot of the Petronas Twin Towers, warning US leaders not to forget what happened in the Vietnam War.


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