Protesters claim victory at G8 (Roundup)

Jun 8, 2007, 14:55 GMT

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.