Noisy demos flare against Canada summits

26 Jun 2010, 9:20 am   -   Source: AAP
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A demonstrator faces police in riot gear near the G20 site in Toronto (Getty Images)

A demonstrator faces police in riot gear near the G20 site in Toronto (Getty Images)

Some 2,000 protesters marched noisily through the streets of Toronto in the first major demonstration against the G8 and G20 summits.

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Some 2,000 noisy demonstrators came face to face with police in riot gear on Friday in tense protests amid a tight security operation for talks by world leaders.

With banners proclaiming "Smash imperialism" and "Down with the G20," the protests drew together some 30 groups including environmentalists, anarchists and those demanding rights for indigenous peoples, immigrants, gays and women.

As the march passed along a main Toronto street, police locked down a steel and concrete security fence ringing the convention centre where leaders from the Group of Twenty (G20) developed and emerging nations will meet on Saturday.

Some 20,000 police have been deployed for the three days of talks in Toronto and the small lakeside community of Huntsville, in the forests north of the city, where G8 leaders gathered on Friday.

Spokeswoman Nina Synder, from the Integrated Security Unit (ISU), said the fence had been closed "because of some security concerns" although police had always planned to shut it later Friday.

Synder could not say whether the closure of the barricade was linked to the protest, adding: "A peaceful demonstration is happening and officers are on the scene."

An AFP reporter said minor skirmishes broke out at the protest, but there were no major incidents, as protesters took to the microblogging service Twitter to post unconfirmed rumours of arrests and sporadic violence.

"Civil liberties have been officially suspended within five metres of the fence site and unofficially suspended throughout Toronto for the duration of the summit," said protester Jaggi Singh, angered by the strong police presence.

"I don't want to negotiate the terms of our misery and the size of our cages," he said. "It's a great protest highlighting all of the community-based struggles in Toronto."

Another protester, Toronto-based animal rights activist Anya Yuschehenko, said: "The decisions being made are not in the interests of humans and animals. We are trying to get the leaders of powerful nations to listen to us."

Demonstrators released balloons in the air, and there was music and dancing, but the protest while mostly peaceful, had a serious air.

"It's a very inclusive protest. This is an opportunity to be heard as part of a larger protests," said women's rights activist Heather Ladd, explaining that smaller demonstrations had failed to attract much interest.

Canadian authorities have sought to ensure no repeat of violent demonstrations that have marred such summits in the past.

In September black-clad, masked anarchists fought running battles with US police at a G20 summit in Pittsburgh when young anti-G20 protesters defied police orders and tried to march on the summit venue.

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