US peace protesters hit the streets

4.30pm

Thousands of anti-war protesters have taken to the streets in cities across America for a second consecutive day, sparking scores of arrests, even as US and British forces unleashed a massive aerial bombardment on Iraq.

San Francisco, where police arrested a record number of more than 1,300 people on Thursday, was once again the scene of noisy protests on Friday, though of far less intensity. Police said they detained about 200 people by late afternoon and expected more arrests into the evening.

A rally in New York's Times Square rally was much smaller and tamer than Thursday's, with only 150 protesters on another rainy day. Organisers expect tens of thousands will march on Saturday. San Francisco and other cities planned large Saturday rallies, as well.

The Friday protests against US President George W. Bush's decision to wage war against Iraq were the latest wave around the world that extended from Asia, across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States to its western shores.

Following a Thursday anti-war protest in Chicago with as many as 10,000 demonstrators, hundreds of protesters turned out Friday morning there to surround a federal office building.

They lay down in front of the building entrances and disrupted adjacent rush-hour traffic before police in riot gear moved in, clearing a path and making dozens of arrests.

Other parts of America rallied on Friday in support of the troops in Iraq. Middle school children in Dallas suburbs put their regular classes on hold as they sent messages of encouragement to US troops.

A Gallup poll of 600 Americans taken on Thursday night found 60 percent strongly approved of Bush's decision to go to war, a survey that had a 4 percent margin of error.

Some demonstrators beat drums and painted their faces in patriotic colours. "We're in the red, white and blue because we feel it's not patriotic to invade another country and force democracy when President Bush is already shredding the constitution at home," said Mark Messing, 45, an artist. "It's patriotic to dissent."

More than 500 people were arrested on Thursday night in a largely peaceful protest that blocked a key lakefront artery in Chicago. Organisers said seven or eight demonstrators suffered injuries, including a fracture from a baton blow. But police defended their actions, saying protesters refused to disperse.

San Francisco police arrested 1,311 people on Thursday, a city record, although all but 125 were released before spending the night in jail, said sheriff's spokeswoman Susan Fahey.

In the scenic town of Taos, New Mexico, about a dozen protesters entered a dairy farm belonging to US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and plastered the property with anti-war stickers, local officials said.

Police said they arrested 37 people in Sacramento, California on Friday, where some blocked access to a federal courthouse in the state's capital.

Two cherished American values have clashed in the protests: the right to dissent versus freedom to drive a car anywhere.

Protesters on Thursday closed off large parts of San Francisco as well as streets in Washington, New York, and other cities, provoking some citizens to react angrily to the disruption of their daily lives.

"It is one of the painful ironies of this war that one of the most anti-war cities in the nation, San Francisco, is being disproportionally harmed by the tactics of the anti-war protesters," Mayor Willie Brown said.

"I must express my frustration at the tactics of some protesters, who have chosen to specifically try to disrupt this city, rather than gather peacefully to voice their desire for peace, at the expense of the day-to-day lives of ordinary San Franciscans -- and at great cost to this city."

Organisers say the public inconvenience is a minor price compared to the suffering that comes from war.

"Civil disobedience is breaking the law which results in arrests," said Ilyse Hogue, an organiser with Direct Action to Stop the War. "That is the way and the tradition of our country from the Boston Tea party to the Women's Suffragette movement that social change has occurred."

On Friday, thousands of protesters gathered in Arab capitals, resulting in some violence and at least two dead.

In the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, an 11-year-old boy and another protester were shot dead in a clash between police and anti-war protesters, an Interior Ministry official said. In Cairo, the biggest city in the Arab world with almost 17 million people, at least 5,000 angry protesters clashed with police using water cannon.

- REUTERS


Herald Feature: Iraq