Cancun, Sept 14: Demonstrators, some helmeted and armed with stones and rods, had stood in a tense stand-off with riot police who blocked their route to the venue of the World Trade Organization's Cancun conference. Police placed themselves in a 30-foot breach the protesters opened in a barrier set up to keep them 10 kilometers away from the fortress-like complex where ministers from 146 countries tried to break a deadlock in trade liberalization talks.
A group of South Korean militants earlier used ropes to pull down the barrier after women groups used wirecutters to open holes into the fences. While organizers urged protesters to remain peaceful about 100 radicals, known as the black bloc, yesterday came armed with stones, rods and other projectiles, as well as home-made gas masks and shields.
The South Korean militants, among them trade union and farmers representatives, led the protesters in paying tribute to one of their own who stabbed himself in a protest suicide on Wednesday as the five-day WTO conference got under way. The demonstrators then burned paper puppets representing the WTO as well as an American flag, to chants of "total rejection of the imperialist WTO". Bureau Report